Dream of the Earthbound
by Aondehafka
Summary: A story about one of Mankind’s oldest dreams, and one of Shampoo’s dearest dreams, and a primary focus of Saotome Anything Goes Martial Arts. When all these elements come together, Nerima—and particularly Ranma—will never be the same again.
1. Gift of Icarus and Oberon

Dream of the Earthbound

A Ranma ½ fanfic by Aondehafka

Disclaimer: Ranma ½ and its characters and settings belong to Rumiko Takahashi, Shogakukan, Kitty, and Viz Video. This story based on the anime, not the manga.

Note: dialogue enclosed in brackets indicates Mandarin.

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Chapter 1: Gift of Icarus and Oberon

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"Hmm? What's that?" Akane said, more speaking the thought aloud than actually asking her companion. She and Ranma were on their way home from school, after a day that had been rather boring. There had been no speeches or antics from either attendant member of the House of Kuno, nor had any of Ranma's other rivals (or suitors) put in an appearance. As she had been for a week now, Miss Hinako was still working her way through the biggest jar of Pocky Akane had ever seen, and was in too good a mood to drain anyone for minor offenses. Which meant one Ranma Saotome, reluctant fiancé to the equally reluctant Tendo daughter, was getting away with using her class to catch up on sleep. All in all it had been an utterly unremarkable day, and Akane was ready for a little diversion. Such as looked to be waiting for her up ahead, where the stream of passersby coagulated around some sort of large wooden booth.

Akane increased her pace, working her way through the onlookers until she could get a good view. The sides of the booth framed a miniature stage complete with velvet curtain, which was currently drawn back to give the viewers a clear view of the show. Across the stage danced several wooden marionettes. Every detail about them spoke of the work of a master, from the articulation of their joints to the artistry of their carving, from the brilliant, vivid, flawless paint jobs to the graceful fluidity with which the invisible puppeteer controlled them. Akane watched, spellbound, for nearly a minute. "Isn't that amazing?" she asked at last.

On hearing no response, she turned some of her attention from the spectacle. "Ranma? Don't you think–" She let the sentence lapse, as the complete and total absence of her pigtailed companion registered.

"Ranma? Where are you?" she called, looking around for him, paying no attention now to the marionettes. She therefore remained oblivious to the sudden jerk and stutter of their movements, or to the rapidly increased pace of the performance after the unseen puppeteer recovered from whatever had broken his concentration.

Finding no sign of Ranma in the crowd around her, Akane worked her way out of it and scanned up and down the street. At first this effort was equally fruitless; Akane frowned, sighed, and looked higher. Sure enough, there was Ranma some five blocks down, walking casually away, or at least as casually as one can when striding along the roof of a three-story building.

He had nearly reached the intersection that marked the next turning they would take on their way back home. Akane hurried after him, making that turn and catching up just as he jumped down to terra firma, joining him in an alleyway which was otherwise empty. "What was THAT for?" she huffed, her wind stolen by indignation rather than exertion. There was a time when that sprint would have left her breathing at least a bit more heavily, but the conditioning she'd done with Ryoga during that business with her pseudo-sisters Natsume and Kurumi hadn't completely left her yet.

Ranma shrugged and kept walking. "Just didn't feel like dealing with that guy today."

Judging from the look on Akane's face, this answer was about as clear as mud. "What's that supposed to mean?"

By now Ranma wore his own incredulous look. "Come on, Akane, don't tell me you didn't catch on. It's the same old thing we've seen over and over again."

"What, you saying things that don't make much sense?" she fired back. Then she blinked. _'Wait a minute, that's not what usually happens. He usually says something insulting or perverted, not just plain weird.'_

"Geez, you're thick," Ranma complained, as if hearing her thought and acting to restore the status quo. "I'm talking about what happens when some weird new guy shows up in town. It always—and I do mean ALWAYS—means he's gonna make trouble for me."

_'Oh, yeah, my mistake. He usually says something insulting, perverted, or egotistical.'_ Akane snorted. "Honestly, Ranma, listen to yourself. The world doesn't revolve around you, you know."

"Ahem." After clearing his throat and pausing for emphasis, Ranma said, "That guy with the trained frogs. That idiot Martial Arts Calligrapher. The Battle Shogi moron. The Gambling King. The Jusenkyo Preservation Society! Pantyhose Taro!" By now he was struggling to keep from shouting. "Picollet Chardin! The Ghost Cat! Mousse! Ryoga!! Don't tell me you forgot all of 'em, Akane!"

"Well, maybe if you don't go out of your way to be a jerk to this one like you usually do, he won't have any reason to get mad at you!" she fired back. Noting the stubborn look reflected on his features, she continued, "Honestly, Ranma, this is ridiculous. I bet you'll even sneak off tonight and deliberately offend the guy, just so you can say you were right when he challenges you tomorrow!"

"Ranma Saotome, I challenge you!"

"This always happens," Ranma muttered. Giving Akane one last disparaging glance, and realizing that she was now too busy staring bug-eyed over his shoulder to take any notice, he heaved a sigh and turned.

It was still vaguely recognizable as the booth from the previous street. However, like the rose that blossoms from tight compact bud to threatening expansive flower, the booth had folded outward in all directions, panels moving along seams that had been invisible to Akane's casual earlier inspection. It now resembled nothing so much as a wooden parody of a small, primitive mecha, stretching ten feet from wheeled base to topmost control seat.

The man seated inside that upper deck was a European gaijin in his middle twenties. His head was shaved bald, and on his bare scalp was tattooed the indigo image of a hand. A thread led from each finger, black whisper-thin tattoos that snaked down his face, down his neck, and disappeared under his clothes.

The newcomer raised one fist and shook it in a universal gesture of righteous anger. Ranma idly noted that a tattooed thread, presumably one that led all the way back to the image of the hand, terminated at his wrist. "Ranma Saotome. Today is the day of vengeance and of wrath!"

"I know I've never met you before," Ranma deadpanned. "I woulda remembered. Who are you, and just what did my old man do to tick you off?"

"Isn't that just like an infidel, to try and shift the blame of his sin onto an innocent man," the other sneered. "I am–" He stopped, and waited the minutes it took for Ranma and Akane to recover from this reference to Genma. Once they were more or less able to pay attention again, he continued, "I am Jere Radinov, of the Order of Heaven's Threads. We recognize the truth that all men are the puppets of the gods, who pull our strings and set us dancing for their amusement."

Ranma nodded his head in involuntary agreement. His life sure felt like that sometimes.

"And though they have not yet come to know the fullness of this truth, the Holy Clan of the Cursed Dolls are our strongest and oldest of allies!" Jere continued, glaring all the more fiercely. "You trespassed greatly against them, Ranma Saotome. You defiled the hot springs doll that is one of their most revered and venerated objects of worship. For this sin against our honorable allies, I shall make you pay!"

"Just a minute here!" Akane snapped, stepping forward past Ranma, who was too busy gaping at Jere to stop her. "What gives you the right to do that? They're the ones who ought to be taking revenge on Ranma, not you guys!"

The acolyte snorted. "Do you understand nothing of honor, girl? Or of standing beside your allies when they need you?"

"I understand plenty!" she retorted. "You're the one who doesn't. It should be them fighting their own fight, and you helping them if they need it! Not you jumping in and doing it for them like they can't even stand up for themselves!"

"Our allies feel that they cannot do so, because the doll itself let Ranma off the hook. And so it falls to us to step in and set things right." Several minutes back, Jere had slid his hands out of sight beneath a wooden panel. The muscles in his forearms suddenly twitched, an instant before the booth-turned-pseudomecha opened further, expanding outward with a meshwork of wooden lattices, from which descended strings leading to puppets two-thirds Ranma's own size. Each puppet moved purposefully and menacingly, the whole of them weaving back and forth in the space between Jere and the teens, gesturing with swords and spears that definitely were not stage props.

Ranma took a couple of extremely quick steps forward, getting between Akane and the threat. "Okay, fine, have it your way. Well, sort of your way," he amended, his hands coming up, together, and forward. "MOKO TAKABISHA!"

The chi blast cleaved easily through puppets and puppet-booth alike, reducing them to a cloud of splinters, threads, metal, and cloth. Fortunately Jere's own perch had been high enough that by the time he hit the ground, all the sharp pointy blade bits were several yards further down the road. The man just sat there, staring up from the ruins of his booth-turned-mobile-weapons-platform, his face quite pale and sweat popping out on his brow. He muttered something under his breath in his own language, but neither Japanese teen was able to translate.

"Y'know, it actually feels a little good that you aren't from Japan," Ranma stated. "Nice to know there's other people who have to put up with crazy stuff like I do. But if it's not too much ta ask, and seeing as how you are seriously outmatched here, I'd like you to give it up and go home. Deal?"

Jere got unsteadily to his feet. "I- infidel! Though you wield sorcerous powers, th- the like of which I have never seen..." He stopped for a moment, seeming to be having difficulty swallowing, as if there were something large, hard, and jagged caught in his throat. Getting it down at last, he spoke again. "I will n- not be swayed! I will not betray the tenets of my Order!"

"How the heck ain't you doing that already?!" Ranma wanted to know. "Blamin' me for what I did, when your stupid Order believes the gods move us people around doing what they want for their own amusement. How the heck you figure what I did is my fault?"

Neither pigtailed boy nor shorthaired girl would have thought there was any way for Jere to lose more color than he already had. However, impossibly, at this point he did. The wind rose in a sudden gust, playing about their feet and tugging at their clothes. Not a word was spoken. Somewhere, off in the distance, a cricket chirped.

"Ranma!" Akane yelled, turning at last from staring worriedly at Jere to glare at the boy in question. "How could you do that to him?! Look at how bad he's taking this!"

"Oh, and I suppose that's my fault?"

"Your fault? Of course it's your fault! Look at him. You just gave him a crisis of the faith or something!" Akane's fists clenched, a sure sign that her temper was reaching the boiling point. "That's really low, even for you. What have you got to say for yourself?!"

"Hmm, how about, 'Give it a rest, Tomboy'?"

Akane saw red. "Ranma, you JERK!"

She surged forward, ready to give him his well-deserved thrashing, bookbag coming up for the opening blow. And then she skidded to a stop, nearly stumbling, as a quiet voice cut through her ire. "What was that?" she asked, turning back to Jere, relief replacing some anger on seeing him at least a little recovered now.

"I said, please, stop," Jere said, speaking with some difficulty. "He... he doesn't... I don't..." After another long pause, the man managed to give a jerky approximation of a bow, and say, "Please forgive me for troubling you. It will not happen again." Moving slowly and unsteadily, he made his way back to the mouth of the alley from which he and his booth-gone-bad had entered, disappearing into the larger thoroughfare beyond.

"Well, that went better than it usually does," Ranma commented, as he and Akane resumed their own journey homeward.

Akane frowned, and gave him a low-power smack with the bookbag. "Aren't you even a little sorry about what you just did?"

"No," Ranma said flatly, opting not to get into a long, fruitless discussion about just what the heck Akane thought he should have done differently. "Aren't you even a little sorry for not listening to me earlier?"

"Listening to you earlier? What are you talking about?"

He sighed. "When I pointed out that things were once again happening just like we've seen them before, over and over. Nothin' ever changes around here, Akane."

Akane gave a loud hmmph. "Says someone who only found out a few months ago that his mother was still alive."

Ranma frowned back at her, but there was more sadness in his expression than anger. More than a month had passed since Nodoka told a certain redhead that she'd make a wonderful wife some day, but the pain was still there. "Okay. Nothin' ever changes for the better."

"Nihao, Ranma!"

The cheery cry resounded through the air. Both teens whirled, orienting on the sound and finding Shampoo dropping through the air. As was often the case, she wore a short Chinese dress that was tight enough not to be rendered indecent (at least, any less decent) by the wind of her descent. Neither Akane nor Ranma noticed in that moment, but the hair ornaments that usually secured the Amazon's odangos were nowhere to be seen; instead, a pair of bright, festive ribbons tied the forward tassels of her hair.

_'What perfect timing,'_ Akane thought grumpily. It had been two weeks since Shampoo and Cologne left for some business in China, two glorious weeks of no top-heavy too too cute underdressed bubbly bimbos draping themselves over Ranma and plying him with oh-so-delicious ramen. She might have known it wouldn't last much longer. _'Why can't Ranma be right when it's about something good instead?'_

_'Hey, that's new,'_ Ranma thought as the Amazon touched down a few paces away from him. _'She's on foot and she ain't landing on me. Usually she's on the Bike of Pain and I end up with my face in her cleavage or something.'_

"Is very good to see Airen again!" Shampoo enthused, taking several quick steps that closed the distance between herself and her beloved. She took his hand in her own, either missing or ignoring the fact that this raised his uneasiness level by a couple of notches. "You come with Shampoo, Ranma? Have important talking, much to tell!"

"Uh, I'm kinda busy right now," Ranma said nervously, trying to walk that fine line between hurting Shampoo's feelings and engaging Akane's temper.

Shampoo just gave him a wink and a big smile. "Not for this Ranma is not. Is very good news, Shampoo promise Ranma be very, very glad to hear!"

"What is it this time, Shampoo?" Akane wanted to know. "A love pill? A Red Thread of Fate? A big bell that'll make whoever has it love whoever has the matching little bell?"

"Why you so mad this time, Akane?" Shampoo answered, speaking just as cattily as had the youngest Tendo. "Grow face hair from cheat with Super Soba? Get beat by new little sister out of nowhere? Put family in sickbed after you cook breakfast?"

"I don't have to stand here and listen to this!" Akane declared. "Come on, Ranma, let's go!"

"You go, Ranma stay!" Shampoo replied just as firmly. "Have to tell him good news."

"That's it? Just tell me something? Okay, Shampoo, go ahead. I could use some good news right now," Ranma said, desperately striving to remain balanced on that ever-narrowing line.

"Is for Ranma's ears only. After you hear, is you choice to tell Akane or not," the Amazon responded. "Shampoo choose not." Seeing Ranma look very dubious, Shampoo pulled out the big guns. "Is serious, Airen. Serious as time I tell you to come, hear about Phoenix Pill."

"If it's that serious, then I should hear about it too!" Akane declared, retracing the step she'd taken away from Ranma at the end of her previous dialogue, coming back to stand as close to him as Shampoo was.

"Ranma." Shampoo ignored Akane, staring directly into his eyes. Ranma blinked, caught off-guard by the absolutely serious look in her ruby gaze. Usually whenever she looked at him some sort of passion sparkled in those irises. Now, though, it was just sober determination, a sight that struck him as a very good argument in favor of listening to what she had to say. "Shampoo mean this. You need to hear for own self, by own self. Tell Akane later if you think is right. But Shampoo need to tell you first, in private. Please come now." And with that, the Amazon broke eye contact, spinning away and bouncing to the rooftop from which she'd initially descended, a three-story leap that Akane couldn't have followed if her life depended on it.

Ranma hesitated for one instant longer, then said, "I think I better find out what's going on, Akane. See you back home." Quickly, before she could try to change his mind, or more likely render him temporarily unable to make the jump, he took to the air, landing easily on the rooftop in pursuit of Shampoo. She wasn't there; she had already jumped again, bouncing to another nearby building two stories higher. Ranma followed again, and again, and again, catching up to Shampoo on top of a ten-story building, the highest one in the immediate area.

"Thank you, Ranma," Shampoo said, serious tone and expression still in place. Then her face curved into a warm smile. "Already say is good news. Airen be happy to hear, Shampoo promise."

"So what is this good news," Ranma wanted to know, "and why couldn't Akane hear about it?"

"Shampoo say that already. Is not Akane business. Is matter that not concern her, just you and me. Is good news for you, it not matter one bit to her. That is why Shampoo want to share this first only with man she love." Ranma fidgeted at this, but as she had just produced a portable stove out of nowhere and was currently engaged in lighting it, Shampoo didn't seem to notice.

"How'd you do that, anyway?" Ranma asked, instinctively trying to move the conversation away from talk of such dangerous and uncertain topics. "You study Hidden Weapons on this trip or something?"

"No be silly, Ranma," the Amazon replied. "Shampoo always been able to do what you see now. Most Amazon learn how to store bit of stuff. Shampoo can manage sword and bonbori." A shadow crossed her face. "Not carrying those now, so is easy to pack little stove and kettles and towel." She pulled out one kettle and set it on top of the stove.

"Huh. Well, I guess what you've got to say is really important, since you ain't taking any chances on getting interrupted by your curse." Ranma glanced up at the sky. Fairly cloudy. If it did start raining, that one dose of hot water wouldn't do much good. "Shouldn't you have an umbrella or something though?"

"No," Shampoo replied. "And Ranma all wrong anyway." She produced the aforementioned towel and second kettle, both of which she set aside. Then, quick as a wink, she stepped out of her shoes and shucked off her dress, leaving her bare as the day she was born.

Moving slowly enough to be sure her Airen got a good eyeful, but quickly enough that he didn't have time to descend into full-blow panic mode, the Amazon grabbed up the second, unheated kettle and dumped its contents over her head.

Ranma had already begun edging backward at the sight of Shampoo in all her maidenly glory. Her new action caused him to stumble and fall flat on his rear. He scrambled back to his knees and stared at the sight before him, trying to come to terms with this. Terror-blurred memories danced through his mind, hazy half-recollections of a pink-and-purple cat latched onto him, sometimes in anger at something he'd done, more often in reflex against falling as Akane splashed both Amazon and Airen.

After a few moments had passed, he recovered at least some self-possession. "Heh... guess that ain't happening no more," he breathed. "Good news is right." Louder, and speaking directly to her, he said, "This... this is what you went to China for?"

The falcon perched beside an abandoned Chinese dress gave a skreeling cry of triumph and agreement.

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"I'm home." Akane bit the words off, her tone alone enough to reach Nabiki all the way in the living room and clue her in that they were shortly going to be a few dozen bricks poorer. Or maybe it would be training dummies this time, the middle Tendo mused; it had been a while since little sister had demolished any pigtailed strawmen.

She listened idly as her sibling headed upstairs to her room, opened the door, entered, and turned right back around and left again, swinging the door shut behind her. This was at least mildly surprising to Nabiki, who'd expected her sister to change into her gi and head directly for the dojo. But here came Akane, still dressed as she had been for school, minus only shoes and satchel. The youngest Tendo came into the living room and settled down next to Nabiki.

"So how far into his mouth did Ranma stick his foot this time?" Nabiki wondered.

Akane snorted. "You'd have to ask Shampoo about that. He's off listening to 'big important news!' " she said, duplicating the Amazon's bubbly tones as best she could. "Or at least that's what she said she wanted with him, and the idiot just jumped at the chance to get all caught up in whatever stupid scheme she's working out now. Honestly, I don't know what it would take to teach him a lesson."

"You say Shampoo is back in town?" Nabiki asked, far more casually than she really felt. Knowledge was power, and forewarned was forearmed. If Shampoo's and Cologne's recent jaunt back to the motherland was part of another scheme to snare a certain Son-in-law, then the sooner she knew the particulars and could start setting up preparations to minimize fallout, the better. It was always a good idea to restrict as much trouble as possible to Ranma himself, and if a Tendo had to take some of the blow, by all means let it be Akane.

"Uh-huh. She stopped by just now when Ranma and I were walking back home. Said there was something she had to tell him, and that she didn't want me there for it." The dark brooding look on Akane's face deepened. "He'd better not be eating a batch of ramen with another love pill inside it! I can't believe him, just running off and leaving me behind like that. I bet she just wanted to get him alone so the two of them could do something perverted."

"Oh, yes, that fits his character so perfectly," Nabiki drawled. "All those times I've seen him flinch when Shampoo comes on to him, why, obviously those are just an act. We all know how good Ranma is at putting on masks and telling a convincing lie."

That level of sarcasm was enough to cut through even Akane's anger. She didn't say anything in response for several moments, then heaved a sigh. "I, I've seen that too, I guess. Times when Shampoo made him nervous..." but then her voice hardened again. "Just like it made him nervous when that stupid, _stupid_ cursed doll pretended to flirt with him and he thought it was me! Thinking about that doesn't make me feel a lot better, Nabiki!"

"It should," Nabiki replied. "Doesn't it rather imply that Ranma's more comfortable with how you usually are than how Shampoo usually is?"

"M- maybe." Akane's eyes were downcast, and her voice wasn't much above the level of a whisper. "But sooner or later... I just keep waiting for him to..." Giving a sudden jolt, she made eye contact with Nabiki again. Speaking firmly once more, although her words came out in a rather rushed tone, as if she wanted them to overtake and override the ones that had just slipped out a second past, she said, "All she has to do is get lucky once with a stupid trick like that Red Thread of Fate. And right now that jerk is off giving her every chance she needs to do it!"

"Well, maybe if you save him enough times and hit him hard enough over the head with an 'I told you so', you can get him to forget about spending any time with Shampoo," Nabiki offered. "Even though it's a tenet of Saotome honor to never turn down free food. Even though it's a tenet of Ranma Saotome's personal honor not to make a girl cry. Even though the Amazons are probably the best hope he has for a cure for his curse. Even though–"

"Nabiki, you're NOT HELPING!!"

"No, I suppose I'm not," the middle Tendo said with a sigh. Trust Akane not to notice that none of those reasons she'd just listed had anything to do with romance. Sometimes it could be just as hard to get an idea through her little sister's head as it was for her True Stalker, Tatewaki Kuno himself. Frankly, Nabiki didn't feel like putting in any more pro bono effort right now. "So why aren't you off in the dojo already, taking out your frustrations on a few hundred yen's worth of construction materials?"

"I... I wanted to tell you about this," Akane confessed. "It's just..."

Nabiki gave her sister a long, evaluating stare. "Why on earth are you this worried, Akane?" she said at last. "What really happened this afternoon? Did Ranma seem happy to see Shampoo? Eager to go off with her?"

"...No," Akane was forced to admit. "It's not that... I'm... it's the timing, Nabiki!" she burst out. "The Amazons leave for China without any real notice at all. And they come back the same way, Shampoo showing up out of nowhere and dragging Ranma off for some time alone on the very day after Dad and Mr. Saotome leave for awhile!"

"That's why you're worried?" Well, it was more thought than Akane usually put into these things. She wasn't right, or rather it was highly unlikely that she was, but at least the reason why wasn't glaringly obvious. "Stop and think this through, Akane. Just why did Daddy and his panda pal leave?"

"They went on a training trip with Grandfather Happosai."

"And whose idea was this trip?"

"Grandfather's," Akane replied, in a tone that made it obvious she didn't think the question needed to be asked, not even rhetorically. The thought of Soun or Genma willingly leaving with Happosai was unthinkable enough; the idea of one of them proposing the trip was something at which even a Kuno would scoff. Happosai had literally dragged his two disciples out the front door by the scruff of their necks. Kasumi had spent several hours buffing out the gouges left by their fingernails, the marks of their failure to either resist or take the floor with them.

"And how far in advance was this trip planned?"

Akane shrugged impatiently. "I don't know! It's not like Grandfather would have warned them and given them a chance to slip away ahead of time." He'd told them of the proposed trip, in the same breath given them a minute to say their goodbyes to their respective offspring, and nailed their desperately fleeing forms with the backpacks that he'd already packed for them. "He probably just came up with the idea that day... oh." She blinked a few times, then said, "Is that what you meant, Nabiki? That there's no way the Amazons could have timed things to get back just when Dad and Mr. Saotome had left, because they didn't have a clue they'd be going anywhere?"

"It does seem pretty unlikely," Nabiki replied. "Cologne is the leader of the Amazon tribe, after all. It's quite possible that they just had to go back and take care of some business back home."

"So you don't think we need to be worried about this at all?"

"I didn't say that." Nabiki shrugged. "Just that you shouldn't worry about it any more than you usually do."

"Great. That's a lot of help," Akane muttered. P-chan and her diary knew she spent more time worried about Shampoo than all other girls combined. The Amazon had always been the one who consistently came the closest to snaring Ranma for good, the one who would most readily put Akane down or show her up, the one who'd come right out and tell Ranma to his face how much she loved him, how much she wanted him...

The youngest Tendo's fists balled at her sides. "That jerk better NOT be enjoying himself."

-----------------------

Shampoo cocked her head to the side and stared quizzically at her Airen. A falcon's vision was quite different from that of a human, and there were limits to how far the magic of Jusenkyo went in immediately adapting its victims to use of their cursed form. Viewing the world in this body really only felt strange when she consciously thought about it, which in turn tended to happen mainly when she saw something particularly odd.

Watching the love of her life dance a jig certainly qualified.

"WHOO-HA! NO MORE NEKOKEN!" Technically that wasn't true, nor was what it implied; there had been a couple of times in the last year when some cat other than Shampoo had triggered the state. But they were seriously outnumbered by the times when she had been the culprit, willingly or no, and all the near-misses had been due to her. Ranma spun through a very tight Anything Goes kata, moving at five times normal speed with the force of his celebration. "THANK YOU, KAMI-SAMA!!"

A beak wasn't nearly flexible enough for smiling, so Shampoo couldn't. Nonetheless, she was beaming on the inside. The metaphysical smile only got wider as Ranma danced over to her side, scooped her up in one hand, and held her triumphantly aloft. "Nothin' to be afraid of here, right?!" he called to the sky. "Just a harmless little pink-and-purple hawk. Nothin' to mess anybody's day up!"

Shampoo considered the implication that up until now that hadn't been true, and resisted the urge to give him a quick nip.

The initial wild fury of Ranma's joy had pretty much exhausted itself by now, though he was still half regarding Shampoo, half looking beyond her to the sky with a big grin on his face. He stood like that for several moments, his gaze gradually focusing more on the avian Amazon. It was strange to see a pink-and-purple bird of prey, he decided, as far as he was concerned even stranger than that color scheme had been on a cat. Then again, he'd never exactly taken a good, long, calm look at Shampoo's feline form.

There was more variance to the shades on her new alternate shape than Ranma thought he remembered from her previous curse. Her back was purple, a purple which varied from hue to hue on his close inspection, but was everywhere deep enough to be indistinguishable from black under a twilit sky. That color extended along her wings as well, although there it was broken up by bars of light creamy pink. The curve of her chest was primarily that same light color, though there were numerous freckles of purple spattered there too. The pale pink extended up her throat and the sides of her neck, rising nearly as high as her eyes in most places before terminating at more of the deep purple. Markings like the memory of her typical hair tassels swept down from this, purple bands that pushed their way down her cheeks and past her beak.

Judging that Ranma was probably ready to pay attention again, Shampoo uttered another squawk and gave a quick flap of one wing, pointing toward the remaining kettle that waited to change her back. Ranma walked over there, set her down next to the stove, and reached for the kettle, noting as he did so that Shampoo had adjusted the flame perfectly when setting the water to heat—it would be hot enough to trigger a change, but not enough for discomfort. He picked it up, and only just in time did he remember that after he doused her Shampoo would, once again, be stark naked.

He positioned the kettle and clamped his eyes shut, then tilted and poured. The downside of having his eyes closed meant that he couldn't remove his hand in time to prevent Shampoo's increasing mass from brushing against it, though he didn't realize this until far, far too late. His lack of vision also meant he didn't realize that had just been her arm rubbing past the back of his hand. Ranma scrambled backwards, covering a good five feet before realizing that retreating backwards with closed eyes is an extremely stupid thing to do on top of a ten-story building. He came to a stop, and over the pounding of his heart he heard the reassuring sound of cloth moving against Shampoo's skin.

Once it had stopped, once she was safely clothed, he opened his eyes and said, "Sorry about—GAAHH!" His eyes snapped shut again, too late to do nearly enough good. The image remained burned into the back of his mind, a crystal-clear vision of Shampoo staring back at him with a half-amused, half-exasperated look, one hand open from dropping the towel she'd just finished using, and her other only now reaching for the discarded dress.

The sound of cloth sliding over flesh came again, and ended. "Is okay now," Shampoo called, her tone a good match for her earlier expression. Ranma cracked one eye open, then, reassured that Shampoo was as decent as she was going to get, followed suit with the other. She gave him an ironic look, then sniffed and said, "Silly Ranma, was okay all the time. Akane not here, remember? Is nobody here get mad at you for something like that."

"Uh, right, whatever." _'Man, I really hope when I get home Akane don't ask me if I was up to anything perverted,'_ Ranma thought. _'Yeah, right, who'm I kidding? As if I could get away with seeing something like that—okay, think of something else, change the subject... maybe ask her why that, why not some other curse...'_ Then he blinked. "Hey, Shampoo?"

"Yes, Ranma?"

"You went back to Jusenkyo, right?"

For this he received perhaps the most dubious stare he'd ever gotten from Shampoo. "Is you okay, Airen?" A note of concern rising into her voice, the Amazon asked, "Akane not give you bad head injury while Shampoo gone, did she?!"

"No, and that ain't what I meant. Obviously you did something about your curse," he explained, "but if you went all the way back to Jusenkyo to do it, why this? Why not just use the Spring of Drowned Girl?"

"Oh. That what Ranma mean." Shampoo didn't answer right away, searching for the best words, wondering if she could really pull this off with her limited Japanese. Her great-grandmother had specifically warned her not to take what seemed the most obvious course in explaining this to Ranma. As the Matriarch had put it, "Just tell him straight out, girl. Unless you want to end up pushing him away, DON'T try to play on his sympathy or make him feel guilty. You always take things too far."

"Did I say something wrong?" Ranma asked, after the silence had stretched for a while.

"No. Shampoo just trying to think of right way to answer." The Amazon sighed. "Is point of law, Ranma. Shampoo get Jusenkyo curse for break Amazon law, so no can be cure of curse. Can change one curse for other, but can not just cast aside penalty for my actions."

"Wait a minute," Ranma protested. "You got that curse for not killin' the outsider girl who beat you. And that's me, and I ain't really a girl at all. Why can't you be cured?"

Shampoo looked away. "Remember you is one who asked," she said quietly. "What Ranma say is true, but also true I not in, um, what is word... not in compliance with law right now. That why no can take cure."

"But you... You mean me," Ranma replied, his own voice falling.

The Amazon nodded, then looked back at him with a determined expression. "I not want to say, not want to blame you again. Did that first time I got here with curse, tell you it all you fault. It do no good, just more hurt. Not want make that mistake again. So no be sad or guilty, okay Ranma? This one... Shampoo not think of it as curse at all. Not even think is burden."

"Well, it's definitely a big step up. I'm sure you didn't much like being a c- cat," Ranma said.

Shampoo snorted. "Ranma practice for Understatement of Year contest?"

That raised a bit of a grin on his face. "Nah. Just natural talent."

She flashed him her own smile. "Ranma is man of many of those."

"You know it." He fell silent for a moment, then continued in a more meditative tone, "But there's some things I can't do. Shampoo... what's it like? What's it like to fly?"

"Over last few days Shampoo think about how to tell you that," the Amazon replied slowly. "Still don't think words are right. Is maybe not any words that do good enough job. Can say 'Is great, is glorious, is more than Ranma can imagine,' and that is true, but not come close to the whole thing. Think of you, Ranma, and every normal person you know, and everybody else you not know. You, they, we all born to chains, live our whole life in them, not even realize things could be any other way. What this is, to Shampoo, is freedom from that. Those chains cut away, not weigh me down no more." She stared him directly in the eye. "Maybe this is best way to say it. Mousse get his curse because of you, it make him so mad, he try give you duck-curse too. Try to give greatest enemy a body with gift of flight as revenge. Is single stupidest and blindest thing he ever, ever do."

"Really that good, huh," Ranma said, looking away from her, casting his gaze up into the sky. "It does sound good... heck, it sounds wonderful. Didja know that's a Saotome Anything Goes specialty, Shampoo? Our style focuses a lot on jumps and midair combat. But I guess you just one-upped me, huh?"

"Looks that way," Shampoo said, in a far-too-innocent tone.

Ranma didn't quite notice. His mind was still occupied with his previous line of thought. "You know... that Instant Drowned Guy water you had once, do you or your granny have any Instant packets for this? I think it'd be kind of nice to try out being a hawk for awhile..." For something like that, he'd gladly take her out on a date or two.

"Not know," Shampoo said. "And is very bad idea anyway. Ranma use that, it push girl-curse off to the side, just for one second. As soon as more cold water hit you, water that not have Instant Jusenkyo powder dissolve in it, old curse come back." She gave him a mirthless smile. "Turn into girl one mile up in sky is very bad news."

Ranma's lips curled in a frown of disgust and frustration. "Why am I not surprised. Not like I've ever gotten a break before, why should I expect it to start now... No, that ain't true," he said, reminding himself that the absence of Shampoo's cat-form was certainly a serious turn for the better in his life. "Shouldn't be complaining about half a loaf. I'm glad for you, Shampoo." He smiled, a genuine expression even if it was rather small. "Glad you got something this good after that awful, horrible, evil, terrifying—anyway, I'm glad for ya."

She smiled back at him, though the expression trembled with anxiety that Ranma wasn't perceptive enough to notice. "Thank you for say so, Airen. But Shampoo not out of good news for you yet."

"No? There's more? Cool." His smile was wider now. "Let's hear it."

"Kind of ties in with what Shampoo just had to say to let you down a minute back. About you curse. Shampoo understand why you not like turn into girl, why it seem so bad to you. At least understand a little, anyway, Shampoo think about having curse to turn into man and know how much she would hate it. Would be terrible. Would be worse than turn into falcon, much, much worse."

Ranma frowned at her. "Y'know, rubbing it in doesn't usually qualify as good news, Shampoo."

She stuck her tongue out at him. "Impatience lead to lost chances, Ranma. Well, sometimes it do," she amended. "That not a threat, Shampoo not going to take back what she offer if you impatient, just means more time wasted while–" With some effort, the Amazon cut off her babbling. Taking a deep breath, she spit it out: "I bring back Drown Falcon water for you. If Ranma want, no more girl curse."

There was another one of those long, profound silences. Shampoo waited patiently for Ranma to give some indication of recovering higher-order functions. Currently he was just sitting there, frozen like a statue, staring at her in shock.

Just as Shampoo began wondering whether he'd come back to life if she leaned over and gave him a kiss, Ranma spoke again. "Y- you serious?"

She nodded her head.

"I... I don't know what to say..." After another long moment of silence, something to say did occur to him, but he pushed the impulse aside. It wasn't too hard to imagine why she didn't just bring back some Drowned Guy water and offer him a full-blown cure. He might not be an expert at figuring out how girls' minds worked, but even Ranma was able to see that if Shampoo had to still be cursed, and it was a curse she kind of enjoyed, it would be far more natural for her to want to share that with him rather than just hand him a complete curse cure.

'_Would that really have been so much better than what she's offering me? Heck, with this I could maybe just fly to Jusenkyo on my own if I wanted to...'_ Seeing Shampoo still looking expectantly at him, waiting for some more meaningful response, Ranma said, "Thanks. I... I'm gonna have to think about that for awhile."

Judging from the look on Shampoo's face, this wasn't exactly what she'd wanted to hear. "No take too long, please," she advised, though her tone shifted more toward pleading by the end of the sentence.

"Why not?"

_'Because I broke the law for you again, or at least bent it. Jusenkyo is not to be trifled with. Even what Great-Grandmother and I did, exchanging my curses, wouldn't be okay except for how the first one was handicapping me from doing what I was supposed to. Taking more water away just to give someone a nice little gift may very well get me busted down from Champion to Latrine Guard. It was all I could do to smuggle the water away without letting Great-Grandmother find out about it. I had to leave my weapons behind to have the space available to hide the casks. And I still don't trust her not to sniff out the secret, and if she does who knows what will happen? The least I can expect is her to pour out the water and give me a lecture on not pushing my luck any further with the Law.'_

Shampoo didn't say any of this, remembering anew Cologne's advice/command about not trying to use guilt to motivate Ranma. Instead, she said, "Water away from Jusenkyo will slowly lose permanent power, stays able to give real curse for a while, then one day, Poof! Is just Instant type. Salt soak in that is what make powdered form." It would actually take nearly three months for the water to lose its permanent effect, but Shampoo didn't think it was a good idea to go into that much detail. "You not want to run out of time, right?"

"HELL, NO!!" Ranma shouted, unpleasant memories surging back through his mind, thoughts of all the cures that had just barely slipped through his grasp. "How long do I have?!"

"Sooner the better," Shampoo answered. "One more day is okay, two, probably okay... after that? Is pushing luck." She hoped she wasn't setting herself up to fail her Airen. Surely she could manage to keep this secret at least that much longer.

"...Okay," Ranma replied. "I'll have an answer for ya tomorrow."

She inclined her head, then smiled at him. "Remember, Ranma. Shampoo do this for you. No let it get you all stress out, okay? If worse come to worse, Shampoo always willing to go with you, take trip to China and guide you to Jusenkyo for real cure. Just say word and we do that."

_'Huh? But if she's really willing to do that... then why not just bring back Drowned Guy water in the first place?'_ Ranma stared confusedly at Shampoo for a couple of seconds, then gave himself a mental smack on the forehead. _'Duh, Ranma, think about it. This way she gets to either share something with me, or we take a nice long trip together.'_ That made much more sense. Not long after the dust had settled after that affair of the Contrary Jewel, Shampoo had said something about how she wished she got to see him more. If he took her up on either choice she'd just offered him, she'd be getting some of that.

Well, this scheme was a lot more benign than some she'd come up with, Ranma thought with a smile.

"Earth to Ranma. Is you there? Why you all spaced out?" Shampoo wanted to know.

"Huh? Oh. Just thinking," he replied. "Got a lot of that to do now, I guess." He got to his feet. "Shampoo... thank you. Thanks for all of this."

"Happy to help," the Amazon replied, giving him a warm, wistful stare. "Anytime, Airen. Shampoo happy to be there for you."

-----------------------

Next to a bridge, alongside a canal, beneath the afternoon sun, sat Ranma Saotome. He might more usually be found underneath the bridge than beside it when he came to this area to think, but for the kind of reflection he had to do now he needed a little more light.

It was a tranquil scene. A gentle breeze blew, strong enough to raise soft ripples on the surface of the water, but not enough to stir Ranma's pigtail. There were no clouds in the sky, nor were there any other people within his line of sight.

Not that he was spending his time looking around. The Saotome heir was seated cross-legged on a large rock, staring forward into the water with a deeply pensive expression, studying his reflection. The ripples from the wind regularly caused the image to waver and distort, but it remained clearly recognizable for the most part.

After a few minutes of this, Ranma got to his feet. He took the few steps necessary to bring him to the water's edge, then dipped his hand beneath the surface. The newly-redheaded martial artist returned to her original seat, sat back down, and resumed staring at the vision of herself mirrored in the waters. It was time for some serious soul-searching.

_'This is me.'_ She cocked her head to the side. _'Except it really isn't.'_ She held up one hand, watching as the girl in the canal did so as well. _'This body... this curse... it's the worst thing that ever happened to me.'_ The girl in the water nodded her head, mimicking the action Ranma-chan herself had just taken. _'I can get rid of it now.'_ She let her hand fall to her side, and leaned forward, staring with greater intensity. _'Say goodbye to you. But...'_ She heaved a sigh. _'It ain't a cure. All I can do is change this curse for a different one. Better? Worse? It ain't such an easy thing to say.'_

She shifted her gaze, looking away from the waters. Raising her hand again, she fixed her eyes on that, rotating her wrist and flexing her fingers. _'Way back when he first found out about my curse, Ryoga said it wasn't a curse at all. And I guess I know why he'd say that. Turning into a defenseless...'_ she scowled, remembering the times P-chan's teeth had infringed upon her skin's personal space, _'...well, nearly defenseless little pig, that would be worse than still being human.'_

"Defenseless..." the redhead muttered aloud, then shivered. "No way would I want that. This body, at least I still got hands, feet, arms, legs, still got all my skill and my training, even if I haveta shift my focus when I'm like this. Losing power and gaining speed... there's a lot of worse tradeoffs that Jusenkyo coulda stuck me with.

"But... this one... this choice Shampoo's giving me... What do I do? Do I take it? Do I turn her down?" Ranma-chan got to her feet, staring forward into the water once more, scrutinizing her image as if trying to see past the ripples and distortions and commit every inch of it to memory. Then, without warning, her head shot up and her eyes stared skyward, scanning the limitless blue as if searching for answers written there. Back and forth, from ground to sky again and again, each time requiring a little less time to change the view. Finally, staring up into the heavens, Ranma-chan whimsically called out, "Hey, you up there! How's about giving me a sign?!"

"Pigtailed girl!" Glomp

Ranma-chan's eye twitched. "Always knew the kami hated me," she gritted through closed teeth. In one swift motion, she reached up with one hand and grabbed the arms that Kuno had wrapped around her bosom, bent at the waist while lunging forward, using her other arm to grasp Kuno's shoulder and fling him forward and off her back. The maneuver sent the kendoist shooting forward and away at high speed. He skipped over the surface of the water, reaching the far side only mildly damp, and slammed into the wall of the embankment at a velocity hardly reduced at all from its initial level. The impact was enough to knock even the Blue Thunder unconscious.

"You there! Pigtailed hussy!" Ranma-chan groaned and turned, already knowing what she was going to see. Sure enough, there was Kodachi Kuno, as well as the Kuno clan's overworked and underpaid ninja peon Sasuke. Judging from the number of parcels under which the latter was almost buried, the Kuno siblings had been doing some shopping. Just her luck, the redhead thought sourly. Usually you wouldn't encounter multiple Kunos together outside their home, at least not unless one of them was caught up in a scheme of some kind.

"How dare you treat my brother like that!" Kodachi declared. "You should welcome his suit with open arms! And thereby end your foolish, doomed, infuriating infatuation with my darling Ranma! Oh, dearest Ranma," she sighed, her eyes widening as she gazed into some glorious future visible only to her, "how I long for the day when all these foolish interfering witches cease their efforts to stand in the way of our true and destined love...

"And where do you think you're going?!" the Kuno daughter snapped, her gaze hardening and fixing firmly on Ranma-chan, who had begun moving unobtrusively away.

The redhead scowled, annoyed all the more that she hadn't been able to sneak off while the gymnast was lost in la-la land. "What's it to you, Kodachi? I don't think either one of us wants me to stick around and waste time kicking your tail again." _'As soon as she whips off that dress so she can show off her stupid leotard, I'll run for it. There'll be just enough time for me to get outta sight while her vision's blocked.'_

"You wicked, wicked girl!" Kodachi snapped. Why, oh why had she come out without wearing a combat leotard underneath her dress?! She might have known this would happen! But her two favorite leotards were in the wash, and her five next-to-favorite ones were in the mending. All that she'd had available today were forty-odd plebeian garments no longer worthy of her elegant beauty. The very next stop on their shopping trip was to have been a gymnastics supply store, which would have allowed her to restore herself to proper preparedness. But this vicious little harpy just had to show up half an hour too early! For that, on top of all the other times she had been a nuisance, she deserved a special punishment.

In an instant the Black Rose produced her ribbon and sent it snapping towards the other girl. Ranma-chan, caught off-guard by the absence of Kodachi's staple strip-down-to-one-garment-away-from-naked maneuver, was unable to dodge. The ribbon snapped tight around her, and then she was flying through the air. Her flight was short, giving her enough time to orient herself and realize where she was landing, but not enough to alter her course.

"Pigtailed girl, come to my arms!" a recovered Kuno shouted, despite the fact that he'd already latched those arms around the redhead in a grip an octopus might have envied.

"That's right, you little trollop, kiss my brother and make up!" Kodachi shouted from the far bank.

"Let go of me!!" With a burst of frenzied strength, Ranma-chan broke free. Not giving Kuno time to recover, she grabbed his arm and slung him across the canal again, this time on a more carefully-aimed trajectory. It was Kodachi's turn to be caught flat-footed and fail to evade an attack, as her brother plowed into her with what would be bone-breaking force in a more normal district. The impact carried them both into Sasuke, whose tentative grip on his mountain of packages finally failed. Boxes and bags buried the three unfortunates.

Turning her back on the enraged shouts and confused noises of the Kuno siblings trying to extricate and untangle themselves, Ranma-chan hurried away.

-----------------------

"Okay... hot water... where's the nearest hot water..." Ranma-chan maintained the litany under her breath. Her hair was frazzled, she sported the beginnings of a battle aura, and one eye was twitching noticeably. Anyone with a reasonable amount of sense would have stayed well clear of her.

"Once again this fair flower crosses my path." Mikado Sanzenin stepped out of the doorway of an adult bookstore, stopping right in front of Ranma-chan and arresting her forward motion. "I know that ever since our first kiss, you must have spent many sleepless nights pining for me, aching for the pleasure that was now only a memory." He flashed his most charming grin. "Only a cad far worse than I could deny you something so dear to your heart. Truly you are–"

The thunder of hooves cut his smooth talk short. The self-proclaimed Emperor of Martial Arts Figure Skating paled, turning swiftly away from Ranma-chan. "Not again," he growled under his breath.

"Haven't I warned you often enough?!" Sentaro Daimonji snarled, piercing Mikado with a furious glare. Ranma-chan stared at the newcomer in amazement. In many ways he was just as she remembered him, still wearing the traditional tea ceremony robes that were the uniform of his family style, and mounted atop a powerful brown mare. The horse seemed to be under far better control now than the redhead had seen in the past, though, and for that matter Sentaro had rather a different air about him as well. He was more confident, more forthright, and a good bit more imposing. The glare he leveled at Mikado spoke volumes of incipient violence, of a level that would have any concerned parent jerking the book right out of his child's hands. Crazy as it seemed to Ranma-chan, it looked like there was about to be a fight in which she wasn't involved at all.

She ran that thought through her mind once more, and took several long steps backward.

Noting all that and getting a little more distance had only taken Ranma-chan a second or two. Meanwhile, Sentaro was still speaking. "I've told you over and over, Sanzenin. I won't tolerate your perverted ways with women! They are people to be loved and cherished, not objects to drool over and mark as notches on your belt!"

_'Damn,'_ Ranma-chan thought, _'that girl they picked out as this guy's fiancée must be somethin' else. She's really made a new man out of him.'_

"What kind of a man are you anyway?!" Mikado retorted. "There's nothing wrong with showing a healthy appreciation for feminine beauty."

Sentaro's lips curled in disgust, disdain, and wrath. "Don't you mean, nothing wrong with forcing your attentions on unwilling women... like my Satsuki?! GREEN TEA GRENADES!!" And with that his hands flashed forth, each emerging from the confines of his robe holding two of the projectiles Ranma-chan remembered so well from her own travails with Martial Arts Tea Ceremony.

Off the ice and not currently wearing rollerblades, Mikado was far too slow to dodge. The explosives rained down around him, igniting in a mighty blast that left the 'emperor' squashed flat against the pavement, eyes rolled back in his head and hands extended out with middle and ring fingers bent, pinky and pointer straight.

Sentaro gave a self-satisfied snort, then sent his horse edging forward around the blast zone. "Are you all right, Miss... Ranma!" he exclaimed as recognition dawned.

"Yeah, it's me." Ranma-chan gave him a big smile. "Not gonna sweep me up on the horse and try to take me off to be your bride again?" she joked.

The redhead hadn't expected quite the level of reaction that she got. Sentaro gave a choking gulp of disgust, pulled back and gave her a long, evaluating stare, then slid down from the horse and walked over near to her. "Can I ask you something, Ranma," he said, his tone not really sounding much like a question at all to Ranma-chan. "Why were you letting him hit on you?" Judging by what he remembered of Ranma's combat prowess, and what he knew of Slutzenin's, surely 'letting' had to be the right word. And come to think of it... "For that matter, I once heard a man named Tatewaki Kuno rambling on about his 'redhaired pigtailed goddess'. Is that you?!" Judging by the look on her face, Sentaro was quite confident in saying, "It is! Have you no shame?! How can you have fallen so far, Ranma Saotome?! Acting like this gives real girls everywhere a bad name, and encourages vermin like Sanzenin to prey on those who aren't really transformed master martial artists! How dare you sink so low?!"

He would have continued, but at this point the clatter of hooves cut his diatribe short. Sentaro whirled, to see his faithful steed racing away, an expression of terror on her face.

"That horse is a lot smarter than you," Ranma-chan growled, cracking her knuckles and letting her battle aura flare to its full height.

-----------------------

"C'mon, hot water... gimme a restaurant, a café, heck, even a stupid normal yattai!" Ranma-chan paused, sending a disparaging glance over her shoulder. She'd passed four of the mobile food-serving carts in the last five minutes, but they were all locked in grim competition to see who could offer the best ice cream to people in this area. Not a trace of hot water to be found there, though the ridiculously low prices had plenty of teens clustered around each one.

The redhead turned her attention forwards again and continued walking, coming up on yet another customer-choked ice cream cart. Just as she did, someone broke free from the crowd, a girl with which Ranma-chan had much in common. The satisfied customer licking away at a triple-scoop fudge cone was also relatively short, cute, quite well-endowed for her height, and a skilled martial artist with an unusual hair color for a Japanese.

"Doesn't Azusa know you?" Mikado's sometime partner inquired, coming up beside Ranma-chan.

The Saotome heir gritted her teeth, ignored the question, and kept walking. _'Just ignore her, don't let this get to you, it's just the universe's way of making up for the good news I got from Shampoo earlier.'_

"Are you giving me the silent treatment?" Azusa asked, sounding more than a little indignant. "That's not nice. Thanks to stupid Micky, you won our first match." The second one had been a draw, due to the rink collapsing. "If anybody's gonna be sore after that, it should be little Azusa. And I'm not." As if to show that there were no hard feelings, the klepto queen of kawaii began skating along next to Ranma-chan.

The redhead gave one irritated glance at the rollerblades the shorter girl wore, then deliberately looked away. "I ain't in a talkative mood."

Unfortunately, Azusa apparently was. "You were pretty impressive. Not as good as Azusa, but good. You ought to move to America or someplace where we wouldn't have to compete against each other, and go into Martial Arts Figure Skating too." She paused for thought, a process which took several seconds. "Of course, you'd have to get a good guy to back you up. It's really hard to find someone good enough. Micky was the best I could do." She made a face, then soothed herself with several huge gulps of ice cream.

"Don't wanna get into figure skating," Ranma-chan grumbled, speeding up a little more. By now they'd closed most of the distance to yet another set of ice cream yattai, two of them directly across the street from each other. Only in Nerima, the redhead thought.

"You really should. Although..." Another pause for thought, interspersed with licks at the rapidly-dwindling cone. "You had good skill, but you've got a lot to learn about grace and beauty. You're the biggest tomboy little Azusa has ever seen."

For the first time since this conversation had begun, Ranma-chan felt a slight lessening of her overall aggravation level. "I'll take that as a compliment."

"It's not one!" Azusa said reprovingly. "No makeup, that icky hairstyle, plain old clothes, and I bet you're not even wearing a bra!" She zipped around in front of Ranma-chan, forcing the redhead to stop or run into her. More by reflex than actual choice, Ranma-chan went with the first option, and the jiggle of her unrestrained chest showed clearly to Azusa that her suspicion had been well-founded. "You'll be halfway down to your knees by the time you're twenty... Huh?" The blonde blinked, as the sight before her registered more clearly. "Charmand! Chantage! Loiselle! Mireille! Margot! Alec-Paul! You're so CUTE!!"

Ranma-chan took a quick step backward, bringing up both hands in a warding posture. "What? What d'you want now?!"

"Those ties on your shirt are so cute! Loiselle! Margot! Come to little Azusa!"

The redhead spared one instant to curse. She just had to decide this morning to wear the shirt Kasumi had given her for her birthday, didn't she?! All the rest of her garments just had plain wooden ties, but the fastenings of this one were elegantly carved mahogany dragons. Apparently here and now they were a little too elegant. "Listen up, Azusa—HEY!!" Ranma-chan shouted, as the shorter girl made her move, one hand darting forward to seize the objects of her desire.

Ranma-chan had little difficulty blocking the attack; she did it reflexively, operating on instinct rather than conscious thought. Unfortunately the hand Azusa had used was the one carrying a cone with most of a scoop of ice cream remaining. The cold treat splattered all over Ranma-chan's arm, which was just disconcerting enough for Azusa's free hand, the one that was already moving in for the real attack, to snake through her guard and effortlessly pluck all six ties from Ranma-chan's shirt.

"Bye-bye!" Azusa said. She lashed out with one foot, bracing it against Ranma-chan and pushing off. The force of the move sent her zipping away at top speed. Ranma-chan stumbled back a pace, while the wind of Azusa's exit whipped the redhead's vandalized shirt wide open.

As has previously been stated, the rock-bottom prices for ice cream had attracted enough teenaged customers that each yattai along this strip was surrounded by plenty of patrons. The two between which Ranma-chan was currently standing were no exception—or rather, had been no exception. The sight of the newly-revealed bounty before them changed this in an instant, sending the male half of the customer base rocketing away from their previous positions. Before Ranma-chan could even catch her balance, she was utterly surrounded by half-crazed hormonal guys.

"Dammit!" she snarled, pushing them back as best she could, having flashbacks to the time she'd fought Mousse as a girl and her top had gotten ripped. This same thing had happened then. "Once is more than enough for any lifetime!" This time seemed even worse, in that there were significantly more guys present, crushing in on her, reaching out to her, all of them together radiating a level of lust that would have done Happosai himself proud.

Ranma-chan kicked and thrashed, through sheer ruthlessness creating a temporary pocket of open space. She took every shred of her anger and forced it through the Soul of Ice, turning it from hot to cold. The redhead spun through a very rapid contortion, twisting her icy aura through the heat radiated from the crazed onlookers, forming as best an approximation of a spiral as she could. It was sloppy, and wasn't going to give a very well-formed effect, she knew. But that was okay; all she needed was to get a little space. "HIRYU SHOTEN HA!"

The result was indeed sloppy. The twister formed only for the briefest instant, then destabilized in a powerful explosion outward from her that tossed all her would-be molesters far farther than Ranma-chan had hoped for. Not only that, but the rest of the onlookers, and even the two nearest ice-cream carts, were also flung back by the wind. Ranma-chan would've felt guilty, had she not caught several of the comments the females had made on seeing her state of indecent exposure . Like it had been her idea or something!

Too angry to care a whit for modesty at this point, Ranma-chan shucked off the damaged shirt, then strode over to the nearest guy who looked about the right size and wasn't wearing something too embarrassing for a macho guy like her. She yanked him upright, pulled his shirt up and off, dropped him back to the street, and then donned the garment herself. "Thanks," she said sarcastically, biting the word off. Then she nearly bit her tongue as she looked back down at the jerk whose clothing she'd 'borrowed', only to see him staring up at her with a goofy grin and a nosebleed.

"My shirt... she took _my_ shirt... Thank you, mistress," he moaned in ecstasy.

Ranma-chan gave a snarl that wouldn't have sounded out of place if she'd been in the throes of the Cat Fist, and darted away.

-----------------------

"I don't believe this! How much longer is it gonna take me to find some stupid hot water?!" At least she seemed to have finally left the World's Largest Concentration of Ice Cream Stands behind. Unfortunately, the neighborhood she was in now was a residential one, with lots and lots of little houses everywhere she looked. She wasn't quite ready yet to walk up to one of them and bum some hot water off someone she'd never seen before—the last time she did that, she'd sent one poor housewife into hysterics—but Ranma-chan's unwillingness to resort to such a tactic was steadily dwindling.

She hurried along, scanning each house as she passed it, wondering without much hope whether one of these houses might be the home to a classmate that already knew about her curse. _'C'mon, Hiroshi, Daisuke, anybody... heck, I'd even be glad to see Gosunkugi come out of one of those houses...'_

"Ranma! pant pant Thank goodness it's gasp you!"

Ranma-chan started, turning her attention away from the house she'd been looking at, focusing on the girl who'd just run up and was now trying to get her wind back. It was one of Akane's best friends, she realized, brown eyes, straight black hair... Yuka, that was her name. The girl was normally a cheerful, smiling sort as far as Ranma-chan remembered, but here and now no trace of that usual sunniness was evident. Yuka was pale and trembling, staring at Ranma-chan with the desperation of someone who sees one last glimmer of hope appear just when she had thought all was lost.

"What's wrong? Did Akane get kidnapped or something?" Ranma-chan asked, putting one hand on Yuka's arm to steady her.

"No... not Akane... It's Sayuri... Oh, god, come on! You have to save her! That... that thing is going to force himself on her!" As if this terrible thought had unlocked new reserves of adrenaline, Yuka turned and raced away from Ranma-chan. The redhead followed, keeping pace as they hurried to the end of the current street and made a right turn. Both girls came to a stop then, Yuka stumbling with fresh weariness, Ranma-chan skidding to a horrified halt.

They weren't the only ones staring at the sight before them. An average Japanese schoolgirl cuddled up beside an eight-foot-tall Ghost Cat will draw attention even in Nerima.

"C- c- cat!" Ranma-chan stammered, retreating a good twenty paces in the blink of an eye.

Yuka's jaw dropped. Pulling herself together, she jogged over to Ranma-chan's new location. "What do you think you're doing, Ranma?! Sayuri needs you to save her!"

"Save her?!" Ranma-chan risked one more glance at the sight of Akane's other normal friend. At least, the Saotome heir had always thought of her as pretty much normal. The redhead was quite confident that no normal girl would be happy to be in Sayuri's current position, but the blissful smile on her face spoke volumes. Yuka might not be happy to find out how kinky her friend apparently was, but that didn't mean Ranma-chan was going to face down her worst nightmare to 'save' someone who was perfectly content where she was. "Looks to me like she's just where she wants to be. Ain't we supposed to respect people's rights to make whatever kinda bizarre, scary choices they want with their own lives?"

"You IDIOT!!" Yuka just barely held back from slapping Ranma-chan, more out of a suspicion that doing so would hurt her hand than any other reason. "You don't think she'd do that if she was in her right mind, do you?! Look at the stupid necklace she's wearing!"

Reluctantly, Ranma-chan did so, focusing on Sayuri and her jewelry with intensity enough to prevent the sight of the Ghost Cat from registering. "What'm I supposed to... Oh." Now that Yuka had drawn her attention to it, the necklace did seem rather suspicious. It was a large, solid chain, much heavier than girls usually would choose to wear as jewelry, and Ranma-chan was nearly certain that each link in the chain was formed from a twisted, distorted small bell. The kind of little bell that was supposed to tie the heart of whatever girl held it to the Ghost Cat Miao Moulin, who possessed the matching big bell. Ranma-chan had never seen that particular effect actually work in her prior encounters with the feline phantom, but then again the spirit had previously only ever handed out one little bell at a time. "Did she start acting like that after she put it on?"

"After that monster tossed it over her head, you mean. Yes!" Yuka exclaimed. "You've got to save her, Ranma!"

The redhead heaved an extremely reluctant sigh. "Yeah, I guess so," she said unenthusiastically, fighting off twin shudders, one from the idea of getting up close and personal with the spectral feline again, the other from the sight before her. Sayuri had just begun rubbing her cheek against the Ghost Cat's. Her cheeks were flushed, and her smile had gotten even wider. Better not to waste any more time.

Ranma-chan darted over to one of the onlookers, a man who was alternating between staring incredulously at the sight before him and frowning worriedly at the half-empty sake bottle he held in one hand. "Scuse me, time for you to do your part to help out," Ranma-chan said briskly, then slipped the bottle out of his hand. She pivoted, letting the motion of her turn give her extra power, and threw the bottle toward the cross-species couple. The missile bounced off Miao Moulin's head, spilling a fair amount of sake over him, knocking him away from Sayuri, and sending him to the ground in a dazed heap.

Sayuri gave a cry of distress and reached out toward her fallen paramour. Ranma-chan was already blazing in at top speed, though, and snagged her before she could close the distance. The redhead dashed the length of an entire block, then whirled Sayuri into the air. The brunette squealed in shock and dismay, a noise which cut off abruptly as her spin brought her upside down and the necklace slipped off to fall to the ground below. Ranma-chan caught the dazed schoolgirl, set her back on her feet, then grabbed hold of a nearby bench. The thought of Miao Moulin using that chain on her gave her more than enough adrenaline to rip the bench out of the ground and bring it crashing down on the artifact, smashing it to what she seriously hoped was uselessness.

"Aowwww... that's nyot fair..." the Ghost Cat whined, sitting up and rubbing his head with one paw. "Why'd you have to... Ranma!" His eyes widened as he took in the sight before him. It was the most beautiful redhead he'd ever seen, the girl with that intriguing hint of felinity in her soul, the one who was second only to Shampoo as a desirable potential mate. And since Shampoo was off limits, given what that horrible old woman had said she'd do to him if he ever caused Amazons any trouble again, that actually put Ranma in first place.

"Oh crap," Ranma-chan said, noting the hearts and stars that had just appeared in the Ghost Cat's eyes. "Later, or better yet, never." She turned, intent on leaving this whole blasted nightmare in her dust.

In that instant, the Ghost Cat ran his paws through his coat, gathering up a bunch of loose hairs which immediately wove themselves into an impossibly long cat's cradle. Ranma-chan had taken only the first step away when the strands caught up and snared her. She screamed bloody murder as Miao Moulin gave a quick tug, sending her flying back into his embrace.

"Oh, Ranma, it's been so long and I've been so lonely. Myi'm not giving up this time!" The giant spectral cat punctuated this declaration by giving the redhead a long, loving lick, then rubbing his cheek against her. Ranma-chan struggled, but even though the cat's cradle had vanished she was having no luck whatsoever in freeing herself; her position afforded her almost no leverage, the Ghost Cat had a distinct strength advantage, and she was currently too frightened to think straight. She could already feel the darkness of the Cat Fist creeping up from the blackest depths of her unconsciousness.

CLONK "MYAOOWWWW!" The bench which Ranma-chan had earlier freed impacted with the back of the Ghost Cat's head, wielded by the combined fury of Sayuri and Yuka. The blow didn't quite KO the spirit, but it was enough to destroy his grip on Ranma-chan. In an instant the redhead was out of the horrible embrace, running away as fast as her legs and her terror could take her.

-----------------------

"If this is some kami's idea of a joke, it sure isn't funny," Ranma-chan growled. Suddenly lifting her gaze to the sky, she screamed, "YOU HEAR ME?! IT'S NOT FUNNY AT ALL!!"

The rest of the people on this lane had already been giving the redhead a fairly wide berth; her rumpled appearance, her battle aura, and the fearsome glare she sported were enough to ensure that. This declaration just prompted them to pull a little further back. Ranma-chan caught sight of one particularly fearful stare, grumbled a few choice curses under her breath, and began plodding forward again. She covered two more blocks at that same trudging pace, no longer even slightly surprised to find that there were still no sources of hot water available.

Five minutes after that, though, her search finally bore fruit. Up ahead stood a lone yattai, one whose sign proclaimed that it offered the best varieties of tea that could legally be purchased off the street. Ranma-chan didn't care a whit for the quality of whatever beverages they served, but the fact that this yattai was bound to have hot water was the best news she'd had in what seemed like a very long time indeed.

Finally breaking into her first smile since leaving Shampoo, the redhead increased her pace. The expression lasted just long enough for her to close the rest of the distance, realize there was no-one manning the yattai, and take note of the 'closed' sign. Ranma-chan let out a low, quivering moan, and sank down with her back resting against the cart. _'Guys don't cry... guys don't cry...'_

"Is something wrong, young lady?"

The concerned, grandmotherly voice drew Ranma-chan's attention up from her private misery. An older woman was looking down at her with sympathy and worry plain on her face. "I just... I really, really want some hot water..." Ranma-chan replied, gulping a few times during the process of getting the sentence out.

Moemi Hamabusa paused, taking a good long look at the redhead's visage and general appearance. She was scuffed and rumpled, with several smudges on her face. The poor dear had obviously been through some trying experiences, probably a run-in with some of those martial artist hoodlums who were such a trial in this district, and wanted to clean up and make herself presentable again. The older woman offered a reassuring smile. "Just wait a minute, young lady, and I'll have some heated up for you."

"Oh, thank you! Thank you!!" Ranma-chan said, not even realizing she was now doing her best 'sparkly-eyed vision of beauty' routine, the one that was usually reserved for scamming free food from male teenaged vendors. She beamed at Moemi as the woman moved around to the other side of the yattai, poured some water into a kettle, and began heating it. Ranma-chan stared at the kettle as if it contained the answer to all her hopes and dreams, waiting what seemed like years for the water to heat sufficiently.

"Here you go," Moemi said at last, handing over the kettle. She offered Ranma-chan a clean cloth as well, which the redhead regarded for one puzzled instant before returning her attention to the far more precious gift she'd just been given.

"Ranko? Is that you? It is!"

Slowly but inevitably, every last iota of joy drained out of Ranma-chan's smile, reducing it to a sickly grin. _'No... it can't be... aw, hell, who do I think I'm fooling? Of course it can.'_ She gulped, steeled herself, and turned around. Sure enough, standing a few feet away from her was one of Japan's few other natural redheads, a woman far closer to 'Ranko Tendo' than she knew, the most important woman of Ranma's life: Nodoka Saotome.

"Auntie Saotome! What a surprise!" Ranma-chan said, smiling as pleasantly as she could manage.

"Yes, it is. A wonderful one," Nodoka said, her smile eclipsing the younger redhead's by a significant margin. "What brings you out this far away from home?"

"Oh, just walking around, having... fun." Forcing that last word out took quite a lot out of Ranma-chan. "You know, girl stuff."

Nodoka didn't quite know what sort of 'girl stuff' would have Ranko wandering around on her own looking so rumpled, but was too polite to say so. At least the girl seemed to care enough about her appearance to want to clean up. "I see. Were you about to wash your face, Ranko? You do have one or two little smudges."

"Hahahaha! No, that's not it. Hot water is terrible for your skin, you know," Ranma-chan confided with a manic grin. "Wouldn't want to get any of that anywhere near my precious schoolgirl complexion."

"Then... what...?" Nodoka asked, feeling a little unbalanced from the unexpected reaction.

"Oh, this?" With no further ado, Ranma-chan hefted the kettle and drank its contents in one long series of gulps. "Ah, that's better," she lied through her teeth.

"I see." Nodoka blinked a few times. "But you know, you still need to wash your face, dear. And..." The Saotome matriarch stepped closer, and took a deep breath. "Ranko... have you been drinking? I thought I smelled sake."

"Drinking? Me? Nope, no way, not a chance." Ranma-chan gave a half-crazed laugh. "That was just from the jerk who decided to make me his squeeze toy."

Nodoka parsed that sentence, and began considering its implications. One corner of her mind noted, as had Azusa Shiratori before her, the lack of a certain foundational garment on the very-well-endowed girl before her. "Ranko, dear, that doesn't sound at all like appropriate behavior for a young lady," she chided gently. "I'm sure it's hard growing up without a mother to teach you these matters, but there are some things that simply aren't done. A young woman should be a delicate flower, demure and proper and well-behaved. Running around wild and unescorted, dressed like a boy in all the ways that matter," she gave Ranma-chan's chest a disapproving look, "just isn't right."

"Sorry, Auntie Saotome," Ranma-chan muttered, looking down.

"Would you like to come shopping with me, dear? I would very much like to teach you some things, lessons that you really need to learn," Nodoka offered, hoping desperately that the redhead would say yes. It had been so long, so terribly long since she'd had her own child to fuss over and care for. The Saotome matriarch had even made a quick visit to the Tendo household earlier this day, only to be disappointed yet again when Kasumi regretfully informed her that her husband's master had dragged the menfolk away on another training trip.

Especially perceptive Ranma-chan wasn't, but nonetheless she clearly heard the loneliness and hope in Nodoka's voice. "Ah... I... that is..." she stammered, knowing she was going to say yes but not quite able yet to get the words out. She gulped, screwed her courage to the sticking place, opened her mouth—and then blinked, and turned away from Nodoka, as the sound of an approaching commotion registered. The street actually seemed to be trembling beneath her feet, the redhead noted with some apprehension, and the vibration was increasing along with the climbing noise level.

Two blocks down the street from the mother-and-daughter duo's current position, a large brawl suddenly spilled out of a side-street into full view of the Saotome women. The older of the two blanched, took one reflexive step backward, then hurried protectively in front of Ranma-chan while drawing her blade with a trembling grasp. As if in response, the battle ground to halt, staring down those two blocks in sudden greater intensity.

"Pigtailed girl!/Pigtailed girl!/Ranma!/YOU!!/Pigtailed girl!/That katana is CUTE!"

Tatewaki's, Kodachi's, and Mikado's synchronized cries managed to drown out Miao Moulin's utterance of Ranma's real name. The redhead would have been grateful, if she'd been in any condition to notice the small mercy. However, she was too busy staring in horror at the sight before her, and seeing all too clearly what was about to happen.

Sure enough, all six former combatants declined to renew their battle, dashing toward her instead. Ranma-chan spared one more instant to wonder what the heck that freaky oversized Dojo Destroyer was doing mixed up in this, and then she scooped up her mother and raced away.

"Pigtailed Girl! I would date with you!"

"O HO HO HO HO HO!! You still owe my brother a kiss, harlot!"

"I said myi'm not giving up this time, and I myeant it!"

"GRRR! It's payback time, girlie!"

"Franceska! Franceska! Come to little Azusa!"

"Azusa, you twit! What did I tell you about stealing things worth more than fifty thousand yen?!"

Ranma-chan nearly broke her stride in astonishment as Mikado's comment registered. Was the playboy-wannabe actually in this just to look out for his partner?!

"And you, pigtailed girl! I'm still indebted to you for a kiss!"

No, she supposed not.

"R- Ranko! What's happening?!" Nodoka cried, totally unready to handle such a turn of events. Her day-to-day existence was as peaceful as it was lonely. Nothing in it had prepared her for something like this. From her position in the redhead's arms, she was able to see the chase behind her. In what was certainly not a good sign, already more participants were cropping up in the crowd behind them: a man on a horse wearing an expression of righteous anger, a shrunken old man of about the same size as Happosai but with hair obscuring his entire face, and an uncertain number of black-clad figures whom Ranma-chan would have recognized as faceless ninja minions of the House of Kuno.

Not that Ranma-chan had any chance to realize this; she was too busy running as fast as she could without jarring her mother. Unfortunately, she could sense the crowd behind her was slowly but surely narrowing the gap. Desperately the redhead scanned the road in front of her. All the buildings within sight were at least ten stories high, too high for her to reach in a single bound even had she been unencumbered and in male form.

On the other hand, the street was fairly narrow here...

With an animalistic snarl, Ranma-chan leaped, going as high as she could, bouncing off one building and leaping higher, crossing the street and rebounding off the building on the opposite side. Several bounces later, a panting redhead carefully set Nodoka down on the rooftop, gave her an intense stare of mingled apology, sorrow, and longing, then yelled "Catch me if you can, morons!" to the stalled pursuit below. With no further ado, she took off over the tops of the buildings. The crowd, now swelled to at least twenty people, gave a collective roar and followed.

Nearly a minute later, Nodoka finally found words. "Oh my, Ranko certainly is... talented..." The Saotome matriarch fell silent, gazing sadly after the long-vanished girl. At last, she heaved a sigh, then blinked as a new thought struck her. "Dear me. How am I going to get down?"

-----------------------

Despite knowing that Cologne would have some rather unpleasant things to say if she should return and find him not yet done with his chores, Mousse moved slowly and distractedly through the restaurant. He'd finished sweeping just a little while ago, but the tables still needed to be wiped clean of dust and the kitchen made ready for tomorrow's reopening. At his current pace it would take at least a couple of hours to complete all this, but if he put all his effort into it, he could probably be finished in another forty-five minutes.

Mousse heaved a long, yearning sigh. But who could concentrate on such things when Shampoo was finally back?

She wasn't here right now; she and Cologne were off shopping for the supplies they'd need in the morning, when the Cat Café opened its doors to customers once more. Great-grandmother and dutiful descendent had popped in at the restaurant earlier this afternoon, showing up at roughly the same time classes ended at Furinkan, dropping off the luggage from their trip and leaving again almost immediately. There had been time enough for Mousse to recover from his initial joy that today was the day of Shampoo's return, to see that she was in a good mood, smiling and eager and hopeful, and to open his mouth to ask her if she wanted to go out for the evening. But the Matriarch had been just a little faster, ordering him to have the restaurant made ready for the morrow's reopening by the time they got back. And just like that, after only a couple of moments of his destined bride's company, Mousse was alone again.

It had been a long, cold, lonely two weeks here in Nerima. He still didn't know why Shampoo and Cologne had gone to China this time, but he supposed it was probably another visit to allow the Matriarch to handle matters back at the village that required her personal attention. They'd taken several such trips in the past, and each time Mousse had stayed behind to keep watch over the Cat Café. Each time, too, he'd worried that this time was really a chance for Ranma to sneak away and make a secret rendezvous with Shampoo. But each time Saotome had stayed safely back at the Tendo household. No, that worry, at least, had proven unfounded yet again.

There were other worries, of course, other reasons why Mousse's heart wasn't completely filled with ecstasy at the return of his bride-to-be. Cologne had undoubtedly spent much of her recent time alone with Shampoo trying to browbeat the girl into pursuing Ranma more wholeheartedly. If Shampoo were really unlucky, the Matriarch might have found and forced on her some new cursed artifact that would supposedly chain the Wild Horse down. The Bell of Miao Moulin, that damned Red Thread of Fate—each time in the past, it had just backfired and dropped more stress and heartache on Shampoo. But did the old mummy care? Did she learn from her mistakes? Not a chance in the world!

Mousse grimaced, realizing that somewhere in that fugue he'd apparently dropped the dustcloth. Pulling down his glasses from where they rested on his forehead, he peered around the floor for it. Ah, there it was, underneath that table. He bent down and reached out, grasping the cloth.

The front door slammed open with a bang to wake the dead. Mousse shot to his feet, then clutched his head and groaned at the pain. Knocking a table aside with your scalp as you stand generally isn't much fun. At least his glasses hadn't been in their usual position; they would have been broken for sure. He stared through those glasses at the newcomer, eyes first widening, then narrowing at the sight of Ranma Saotome.

Mousse's arch-rival had clearly had better days. His teeth were clenched, and his brow wrinkled in a glare. His clothes were dirty and torn, with one shirt sleeve missing altogether. He sported a black eye, and he moved with a noticeable limp as he made his way into the restaurant. His battle aura was out and burning, but it was a faint and weary thing, showing that while Ranma might have plenty of anger and willpower left, his energy levels were very, very low. All in all, as far as Mousse was concerned it was a sight for sore eyes.

Ranma spared Mousse one disinterested glance, then turned his attention toward the rear of the restaurant. "Shampoo! I got your answer, and it's 'Hell, yes!' " The pigtailed boy paused, taking a few deep breaths, then yelled, "You and me, right now! Let's go!!"

"What?! Y- you... I... what..." Mousse stopped, considered exactly what Ranma had just said, took a deep breath, gave a scream of fury, and launched a fusillade of blades and chains.

"Not now, Duck-boy!" Ranma snarled, diving forward to one side and upending a table. Several blades buried themselves in it, but the Nekohanten furniture was constructed to Amazon specifications and none of Mousse's weapons pierced entirely through the impromptu shield. The half-blind boy gave a snarl of his own and whipped out several exploding eggs, intending to lob them on a course that would drop them past the table and directly onto Ranma.

"Mousse! What you doing?! Stop right now!"

A new person stood in the doorway, an arrival about a thousand times more welcome than had been Ranma, at least as far as Mousse was concerned. "Sh- Shampoo!" The eggs slipped right out of his grasp. He had time to realize his mistake, but not enough to do anything about it.

The Amazon maiden in question stared in annoyed resignation at the charred, blackened sight before her. Great-Grandmother wasn't going to be happy about the floor. Or the table, she added, noting the damage done by Mousse's earlier attack.

The resounding boom followed by the unmistakable sound of an irritated female sigh was Ranma's cue to peak his head around the table. Sure enough, Mousse's current threat potential had dropped to zero. Not only was the Chinese boy unconscious, or at least incapacitated, Shampoo was trotting over with a scowl and a glass of water for him.

Shampoo unceremoniously dumped the liquid over her oldest friend and most persistent nuisance, picked up his feathered form, and slung him into a cage on the far side of the room. The impact caused the lid to flip down and latch closed. Mousse immediately lurched to his feet and began quacking furiously. Shampoo rolled her eyes, took Ranma's arm in her own, steered the Saotome heir out through the front door, and closed it behind them, cutting off Mousse's increasingly pitiful squawks. "Sorry about that, Airen."

Ranma gave her an odd look. "You apologizin' for Mousse? That's not exactly your fault, Shampoo."

"Not for Mousse. For not be here to meet you." Shampoo paused, giving him her own long, searching stare, reaching roughly the same conclusions that Mousse had. Her beloved had had one heck of an afternoon. "Sorry, Ranma. This really not work out like Shampoo plan."

"Planned? Whaddaya mean?" he asked warily.

"When you leave to go think things over, Shampoo change into falcon and follow you. Meant to make sure you got chance you need, keep trouble from catch up and take away time to think." _'And tell you afterward, so you knew who to thank for an afternoon away from the crazies.'_

Ranma stared dubiously back at her. "You mean you were trying to run interference for me today? Then how come every loony in Nerima crawled outta the woodworks to give me grief?" Just his luck that Shampoo's good intentions had probably somehow managed to stir up trouble rather than suppress it.

"Not every one," Shampoo retorted snippily. "Ranma not see Pantyhose at all, yes?" The Amazon shivered. She'd seen and seized an opportunity to snag a bit more of Ranma's gratitude and good will, but she hadn't been expecting a fight like the one she'd actually gotten. Just her luck that the first menace whose path would have intersected his was someone as fearsome as Happosai's godson. "That was Shampoo's afternoon trial-by-fire. Deal with him was no fun at all."

"Whoah. You had ta fight him? By yourself?"

Shampoo nodded, smiling now at the obvious respect and gratitude on her husband's face. At least that much had worked out as intended. And once he heard the rest of what she had to say, he'd only be happier.

"Damn. Thanks, Shampoo. Dealing with him on top of everything else that happened today..." Ranma clamped his mouth shut. He didn't want to think about it.

"Is not something Ranma ever have to be afraid of doing again," she pronounced.

"Huh? You don't mean you..." he lunged forward, grabbing Shampoo's shoulders and staring desperately into her eyes. "Please tell me you didn't haveta douse him with the Falcon water, to get rid of that monster form."

"Hmmm, sound like Ranma not need whole day to think about it after all," she teased. "No, Airen. Shampoo did not waste your gift like that."

"So what did you do?" If there was another way to handle someone as dangerous as Taro, he sure wanted to learn it.

Shampoo grinned like the canary that swallowed the cat. "Just tell him what he want to hear."

-----------------------

"Bartender! One for everybody in this dump, and make it the best stuff you've got!"

Tanaka repressed a sigh. When he was in the neighborhood Taro was one of the regulars here, despite technically not even being of age to drink. Nobody ever called him on it more than once, though. At least today the kid was in the best mood Tanaka had ever seen on him, swaggering up to the counter grinning from ear to ear. He'd also apparently managed to lose that pantyhose sash somewhere.

"Hey, thanks, buddy!" This was a drinker who'd never met Taro before, which explained his next question. "What's yer name, so I can hoist my glass to you?" Tanaka said a quick prayer, tensing to dive toward the back door and possible safety.

Against all odds, the youth in the dragonscale vest just smiled even wider. "Taro. _Rebel Leader_ Taro."

-----------------------

"Let me see if I got this straight. You used the Xi Fang Gao on him to give him the memory of Happosai actually changing his name to something he wanted... and _that's_ what he picked?!"

Shampoo just shrugged. "We already knew Pantyhose not all there. Change that with Xi Fang Gao take days, not seconds."

"Huh." Something occurred to Ranma. "You don't think he'll throw it off, do you? I mean, like Akane did. I wouldn't say he's any less stubborn than her."

"Hmmm... is good matchup maybe," the Amazon mused, indulging in a moment of wishful thinking. "Anyway, no, Airen. He not break technique and see through fake memory, because he not want to. When Xi Fang Gao work with what victim already wants, no chance it fade or fail."

"Well, that does sound good. He won't be any less of a jerk, but after this he's got no reason to come around. Thanks, Shampoo, I appreciate it." Ranma hesitated, then clarified, "That doesn't mean I think you oughta go around using that technique on anybody else or nothin', though." Especially since it was apparently more powerful and versatile than he'd known. He wondered how many of those 'fake' bottles of shampoo that she'd dumped on him so long ago weren't fake at all, but rather intended for different effects.

Shampoo shivered involuntarily. "Not have to worry about that. Formula is much too expensive to use except in crit... critic... um, in crisis. Great-Grandmother make that very clear after she hear about first time Shampoo use." Pushing aside the unpleasant memories, Shampoo spoke again. "Anyway, Ranma, you have make decision about Jusenkyo and falcon body?"

"Yeah, that's right. Heck, I shoulda just taken you up on your offer then and there," Ranma groused. "But no, I had ta go off and give everybody an' their dog a chance to show me how stupid I'd been. Never again," he swore, then turned back toward the restaurant. "Let's go do it."

"Ranma going the wrong way then," she said dryly. "Water is not at Cat Café."

"Huh? It's not? Why not?"

The Amazon snorted. "Why you think? Shampoo have not tell Mousse about new curse yet, but as much trouble as he always cause me he probably trip over cask and splash water over himself anyway. For sure if he know about Shampoo change out cat for falcon body and offer same to Ranma, he would try to steal water and use on own self."

"Okay, yeah, we don't want that," Ranma agreed. "Where'd you hide it?"

"This way." Shampoo led him down the street, through a right turn at an intersection, and two blocks further along the new road. She came to a stop outside a bath house, one that had apparently sustained some damage recently and was closed for repairs. "In here," she said, then tensed and leaped to the roof. Ranma did likewise, and followed her through the unlocked rooftop access into the building itself.

Only a few moments later, the two of them were safely inside the interior of the ground floor, Shampoo checking to make sure the hot water was still running and Ranma wishing she'd hurry up and get with the main event. Once satisfied that she'd be able to transform her beloved back to his normal self afterward—no WAY was she going to miss out on the free show if he didn't think to protest beforehand—Shampoo retrieved what looked for all the world like a perfectly ordinary cask. Ranma stared at it, trying and failing to find words. At last, giving up, he gave her a look of warmth, gratitude, and happiness that nearly buckled her knees, and reached out for the prize.

"N- not like that, Airen," Shampoo chided, speaking with some difficulty through the lump in her throat. Damn, but she was going to be seeing that look in her dreams for weeks to come. "You hold up cask and dump on self, you change, not have hands to hold cask. It fall on you and bump you head. Is dangerous in body so small, and Shampoo not want that happen."

"Okay, whatever, just pour it on me!"

"Right." Shampoo knelt down, settled the cask securely on the ground, carefully pried up the top, and gave her Airen a big, heartwarming smile. And then, rising to her feet, she carefully began to pour.

Jusenkyo's magic was more powerful than she'd expected. Ranma's form wavered as the first droplet hit him. The cask was less than a quarter empty by the time he shrank down into his new body. Shampoo blinked, nearly dropping the cask in her surprise. She recovered, though, and carefully resealed the container. Maybe if she gave it to Great-Grandmother for use in preparing Instant Falcon powder, it would get her out of some of the trouble she'd just brought on herself.

Ranma, meanwhile, had already hopped over to where Shampoo had earlier begun running the hot water. It was still flowing, filling up a large basin. He stared into the waters, getting as good a view as he could of his new form.

He made for a beautiful sight, Shampoo thought to herself. Where her falcon body was pink, his was a stormy blue-grey. The areas that were dark purple on her were for him a glossy black that matched the hair of his true form. Aside from these differences, the patterns of his coloration were more or less the same as hers, down to those distinct tear-shaped darker patches that extended down his cheeks. Great-Grandmother had said those were the markings of a peregrine falcon, Shampoo remembered, feeling a great surge of happiness well up within her that apparently Jusenkyo had decided to change her beloved into the exact same species of raptor as she herself had become.

So caught up in these thoughts was Shampoo, she almost missed it when Ranma jumped forward into the hot water. She'd been looking forward to that moment too much to let it slip by, though, and paid close attention to the view. She was rather expecting Ranma to dive for his clothes, turn his back on her, and change at lightning speed, or perhaps hunch down in the tub and request her to turn away. However, her pigtailed husband surprised her quite pleasantly indeed by moving slowly and thoughtfully over to another faucet, turning on the cold water, and then just standing there staring at it.

"Ranma? Is something wrong?" Shampoo eventually asked, concern at the odd behavior edging out her appreciation of the sight before her.

"No... it's just..." Ranma gulped. "I know you said we still had time, but what if the water really did run out of power? What if it really had downgraded to just Instant stuff? That'd be the way my luck usually runs. I won't know for sure until I try and see. Just trying to get my nerve up, I guess."

"No worry so much, Ranma. You not be disappointed," Shampoo said, moving over to stand beside him. "Even you have good luck some times." Unable to resist temptation, she reached down and gave him an affectionate pat on his bare derriere.

That little gesture broke right through whatever mental block had kept him oblivious to the naked reality of the situation. Ranma shot forward as if propelled from a cannon, diving into the water at a speed that would have been seriously painful on an earlier day. As it was his action kicked up a huge splash, but before he could strike the edge of the basin Shampoo's reassurance was proven correct; his human form was washed away, leaving a black-and-grey falcon fluttering through the air. His feathers were wet, making flight difficult, but Ranma could already sense an echo of what Shampoo had promised. She'd been right, he knew in that moment, flight was a glorious gift indeed, one that he was going to enjoy to the limit once his wings were dry and he had room to spread them.

"Very funny, husband," he heard Shampoo say behind him, speaking in tones of wry amusement. Something had sounded odd about the words, though...

He turned around, and let out a squawk of surprise. Apparently he'd kicked up enough water to trigger Shampoo's own curse. The pink and purple falcon from earlier that day was just now struggling free from her clothes. Ranma stared at her, realizing something rather annoying. "What the heck?! Why's she bigger than me?!" he asked no-one in particular. Shampoo's form was seriously larger than his own! Weren't female animals supposed to be smaller and weaker than their male counterparts?

"Wait... what?" Shampoo was now as wide-eyed as a falcon could get. "I _understood_ you?! Ranma, can you understand what I'm saying?"

It was his turn for realization and shock. "I... I can. Whoah. I mean, I knew this was magic, but this seems like a little bit much, you know?"

"I'm certainly not complaining," the avian Amazon retorted. "This has to be the nicest surprise I've had all day."

Ranma cocked his head to one side and gave her a quizzical stare. "Huh. What's happened to the way you usually talk, anyway?"

Shampoo did her best to stick her tongue out at him, but her current body couldn't quite manage the gesture. "Silly Ranma, you don't think I talk like that in my own language, do you?"

"Guess that's a good point. So, getting back to my original question, why's your cursed form so much bigger than mine?"

Another thing a falcon body couldn't do very well was shrug. "I don't know. Maybe it's so the males and females of the species can hunt different types of prey?" Shampoo guessed.

That still didn't answer the question of why the females should be the bigger ones, Ranma brooded. Oh well, maybe it was to help them sit on eggs or something.

"Anyway, guess that clears up one thing," Shampoo squawked cheerfully. "Your old curse really was replaced."

"Yeah. Yeah! You're right!" Ranma was now finding out for himself that a beak just couldn't curve into a grin. His happiness was more than evident in the words Shampoo heard, though. "Thanks a lot, Shampoo. I'm really, really grateful for this."

"I'm glad," the Amazon said softly. "Bet you'll be even happier once you try out your wings. Come on and let's get changed back, Ranma; you can't get any decent flight inside this building. And I've got some other stuff for you anyway."

"Huh? Other stuff? What do you mean?" Ranma asked, following Shampoo back into the hot water, once again without pausing to consider just what he was doing. A quick change, fierce blush, and even quicker dive for his pants later, Ranma was clothed and human once more, facing safely away from Shampoo.

Deliberately grasping one last opportunity for teasing, she got out of the hot water and trotted over to the area where she'd secured the rest of her gift to him, not bothering to swing by her own discarded clothes just yet. "Is three bars of waterproof soap, Airen," Shampoo said after retrieving the package. "Use when you know you going to have fight, like if get a challenge letter or something."

"Thanks." To her disappointment, he didn't turn around this time. "Ah... could ya please put your clothes back on now?"

"Hmmm, so that what is on Ranma's mind," the Amazon teased, watching the back of his neck turn an even deeper red. "Okay, okay." She set the soap down and did as he had requested. "Is better?"

_'Less dangerous, at least,'_ one corner of his mind responded. "You said you had waterproof soap for me? Isn't that stuff real expensive?"

"Order all the way from Jusenkyo, yes. Get at source, no," Shampoo replied. "So you not want to use these up too fast, okay?" She grinned at him. "Unless Ranma would like to make trip out there with Shampoo to buy more."

"Ah... right..." A little reluctantly, Ranma accepted the package. The two of them stood in silence for a moment, before he hesitatingly asked, "Shampoo... all this... why're you doing so much for me?"

The Amazon's smile dimmed, fading into a look that Ranma couldn't quite read. "Ranma already know why," she said quietly. Turning away, she continued, "Shampoo need to get going now. And Ranma should too, go try out what is like to fly."

"Right, yeah." He stood there, unsure how to react or what to say, finding more words only an instant before Shampoo could disappear up the stairway that would lead her to the rooftop access. "Maybe we could fly together sometime?"

"Shampoo will hold you to it," she replied, and though he couldn't see her face Ranma nonetheless heard clearly that her smile was back in full force.

-----------------------

It felt like a long way back to the Cat Café. Walking away from Ranma, from the man she loved who was smiling and happy now because of her, going back to the restaurant where she'd find a blind fool in a cage quacking piteously at her, knowing that before this evening was over she'd have to face the Matriarch and explain just what she'd done... none of this was calculated to lend wings to Shampoo's heels. And so she covered the few blocks back to the restaurant at a pace more suited for a geriatric cripple than the Champion of the Amazons. She sniffed in irritation as the comparison crossed her mind, but didn't increase her pace.

As she walked, she began mentally building her defense, or at least the explanation that she would give to her great-grandmother. Okay, she'd bent the law. There was no denying the truth that Jusenkyo was off-limits to the tribe as a whole. In fact, she was one of a scant handful of Amazons of her generation who even knew the truth of the training ground of cursed springs. By ancient law and by order of the Council of Elders, all that was allowed to be common knowledge regarding the place was that it was very dangerous, an area where Amazons were forbidden to go, save for the unfortunates who trespassed badly enough against the law to receive a punishment of 'retraining' there.

She was the youngest Champion in eight generations. She was also the first Amazon in nearly that length of time to receive Jusenkyo's punishment kiss. The irony wasn't lost on the lavender-haired girl.

It had to be the single greatest unfairness of her entire life. Shampoo was sure of it. The curse of Jusenkyo had been given to her for an act of disobedience that truly hadn't occurred at all. She had not carried out the sentence she'd believed was required against the outsider girl that had defeated her, that much was undeniable; but if she had known the truth of Jusenkyo, had understood just what it meant when her new-found husband had dumped that cold water on his head and changed into the redheaded object of her earlier hunt, she would never have left Japan in defeat at all. The law had twisted against itself in ways that Shampoo felt sure were never intended, and she cursed the ruling that meant she hadn't understood Jusenkyo until far too late. Not even her great-grandmother had realized what had really happened; Shampoo's pride had kept her silent, until her plunge into Maoniichuan and the subsequent revelations had washed that all away.

_'Great-Grandmother picked out my old form herself. Chose just what spring she would swat me into.'_ It was a little easier now to smile about this than it had been in the past, though Shampoo's grin was still mirthless and bitter. _'It was supposed to let me get close to the outsider girl, spend time with her when she was unguarded, and catch her unawares.'_ Except that once Shampoo had finally learned about the cold-water curses, she'd seen that the 'outsider girl' could be no girl at all. There had been no reason then to think her new form wouldn't be just as useful in doing what she really needed to fulfill the law, even if she would be getting close to Ranma for an entirely different reason. _'I was even looking forward to posing as his pet cat. Ha. That has to have been the biggest disaster of my entire life.'_

These were thoughts Shampoo had had many, many times in the past. With some effort she pushed them away, reminding herself that she had finally been given a fresh, new start.

_'I can't be cured until Ranma stops being so stubborn about our marriage. I couldn't even have changed my curse, except for how it was making it harder to do what I was supposed to. But because that was the case, it was okay. We could go back there and pick out a new curse, choose the one that Great-Grandmother thought really would help my chances instead of hurting them.'_ She hadn't needed her Airen to tell her about the Saotome school focusing on midair tactics; she'd already known that quite well. In fact, it was a prime factor in Cologne's choice of what new curse to give to her.

Shampoo paused, considering the implications of that a little bit more. _'We didn't just grab a random curse to get rid of my cat form. We talked, Great-Grandmother let me give her my opinion, and we deliberately chose this curse because it was the one that seemed like it would be most helpful. So if it was okay to use Jusenkyo once to make things easier for me to be with Ranma, why shouldn't it be okay to do it twice? Why not give something so nice to Ranma, make him happy, show him once again—heck, show everybody who the best choice for him is!'_

By now she was right outside the restaurant door. Shampoo opened it and passed inside, with the tiniest restored measure of a spring to her step. She was all the way into the restaurant proper before several facts registered.

Mousse was no longer in his cage or his cursed form. She could hear him bumbling about in the kitchen, still working on the chores Cologne had told him to have done before her return. He'd failed at that, though. The Matriarch was seated calmly at a table farther in and to Shampoo's right, sipping at a cup of tea.

Shampoo took a deep breath. Might as well get it over with, she thought. Walking over to the table, she sat down at the chair opposite Cologne. "Great-Grandmother, I see Ranma. Tell him news, show him he not need to be afraid of Shampoo curse no more."

"Good, child. I expect Son-in-law was most pleased?"

"Mm-hm. Ranma very happy with what Shampoo had to tell and give him." Shampoo mentally winced as her voice wavered on 'give'. She'd meant to just slip that unobtrusively in and continue slowly working up to the revelation of exactly how much good news she'd had for her pigtailed love. But someone as observant as her great-grandmother would surely catch the 'mistake' when it was made with emphasis like that.

" 'Give'? Don't you mean 'show'?" Cologne asked dryly. On seeing Shampoo's look of confusion, she chuckled and said, "Don't play innocent with me, child, I know you well enough to be sure you used the opportunity to give him a glimpse of the real you. Without any clothes to hide what you have to offer him."

"Aiyah! Yes, Great-Grandmother." Relief as well as the memory sent a warm glow throughout Shampoo. "He get more than glimpse. And Shampoo pretty sure he like what he see."

"That's coming out of your salary, Mr. Part-Time!" Cologne snapped toward the kitchen, in response to the crash of breaking dishes. "If you've got time to eavesdrop you're not working nearly hard enough." Ignoring the string of blistering oaths muttered under Mousse's breath, she turned her attention back to Shampoo. "And did you heed my warning about not trying to use guilt to drag him in the direction you wanted him to go?"

Shampoo inclined her head. "Yes, Great-Grandmother. Not until Ranma ask did Shampoo tell him why get new curse, why not just get cure. Tell him be sure not to feel guilty about this, about stupid Jusenkyo laws that made life harder for him and me. Told him they were why it take so long for Shampoo to get rid of old, bad curse. Told him how Great-Grandmother say is finally okay to use Jusenkyo to make things better for him, for me. For us."

"I did indeed," Cologne said. "This twisted, hurtful tangle has proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was right all along."

"What you mean? Right about what?"

"About the folly of keeping the true nature of Jusenkyo a secret. I have argued for the last two hundred years that we should warn all our people of just what the place is and what it can do. Jusenkyo is a danger, but it can also be a tool used to great effect."

Shampoo gave her great-grandmother a dubious stare. "Used? Not sound safe, Great-Grandmother."

For some reason, this caused Cologne to give a rather unMatriarchly snort. "That you of all people should say that..." she muttered under her breath. Then, louder, "Your own cursed form is a perfect example of this. Do you have any idea how far your flight range is? Peregrine falcons migrate nearly half the circumference of the world in a year. Amazons with such an ability would make messengers beyond compare. To say nothing of spies or assassins."

"Guess so," Shampoo said, not particularly enthusiastically. None of those three duties was in the least appealing to her. Still, she could see the utility for the tribe as a whole. Except... "But can not really do that when Amazons forbidden even to know the truth of Jusenkyo. That what Great-Grandmother mean?"

"Yes, it's a big part of it. And suppose some fool should fall into the spring that idiot Happi used to baptize his godson? Amazons who know nothing of Jusenkyo might very well slaughter what appears to them to be a monster, not knowing all they have to do is douse it with hot water. Misunderstandings like that are unavoidable as long as only the Elders are allowed to know the truth of the curses."

When Cologne laid it all out in terms such as these, Shampoo was left with only one question. "How other Elders not agree with Great-Grandmother? Everybody ought to know whole truth!"

Cologne shrugged. "A couple of them agreed with me from the beginning, and I've won a few more over to my side over the years. The rest are stubborn, hidebound fools. However..." The Matriarch gave a bloodcurdling triumphant grin. "On our most recent visit home I finally lost the last of my patience, and forced the issue through."

"Aiyah! You mean trial by combat?" Shampoo's eyes were as wide as ever they got. Combat between Elders was a spectacle worth paying almost any price to witness. "Great-Grandmother kick their butts and make them agree? When this happen? Why you not tell Shampoo, let me see?!"

"It happened during the five days I gave you to fly around freely and get used to your new form. And the battles were not open to pubic viewing. I didn't need to spark any more resentment from those old biddies. I knew they'd be sore enough at being forced like this, no need to bruise their pride further by letting the tribe gawk at the spectacle."

"So Jusenkyo is not secret no more," Shampoo mused. "Nobody else have to go through what I go through."

"That is correct. By now everyone should know about the springs. Not only that, but they are now free to use them under supervision of the Elders. The dangerous springs are still off limits, of course; we don't want anyone cursing themselves to become an Oni or a weretiger or Yeti-Riding-Bull-Carrying-Crane-And-Eel. But other Amazons are now following in your footsteps into the sky." Cologne smiled and said, "They know who they have to thank for it as well, Great-Granddaughter. I instructed your aunt to spread the word, to let them know how you have borne up bravely under such unfair disadvantages, and how your struggle and your example finally won this concession for everybody."

Shampoo blinked, not looking nearly as happy as Cologne had expected. "Th- they know? About Shampoo? How Shampoo turn into falcon?"

"Yes, that's true. Why?"

"Ah heh heh..." Shampoo offered her great-grandmother a sickly, feeble grin. "It was on the third day of those five free ones you gave me. I flew around the village. And I... I kind of... flew overhead and hit that sour, stuck-up witch Lin Rei with something."

"Something?" Cologne asked, suppressing a smile with increasing difficulty.

"Something... organic." Shampoo might have found the words to be more explicit in her confession, except this was where Cologne lost it. As she waited for the Matriarch to recover from her fit of hysteria, Shampoo thought with some disgruntlement that she was glad somebody was getting such a laugh out of this. Maybe it would put Great-Grandmother in a good enough mood not to punish her at all for her indiscretion with Ranma. Hey... wait a minute... Shampoo's eyes widened in belated realization.

"Oh, dear, I haven't had a laugh like that in far too long," Cologne said. "At least not for something that happened at home, rather than here in Nerima."

"Great-Grandmother, Shampoo have something else to tell you!" the lavender-haired girl bubbled, all traces of her previous disgruntlement now gone the way of the dodo.

"Ah, yes, I have something for you too. Here," Cologne replied, extracting from the subspace folds of her robe three objects very familiar to Shampoo. "You forgot to pack these for our return trip."

With trembling hands Shampoo reached out and accepted that which her elder had for her: the bonbori and sword she'd thought were lost for good. The very things she'd abandoned at Jusenkyo to be able to smuggle the water back undetected. "Great... Great-Grandmother knew all along? About water what was gift for Ranma?"

The Matriarch inclined her head. "If you haven't figured it out yet, you aren't going to receive any punishment for your actions, Shampoo. However," as she schooled her features into a not-very-stern glare, "I'm afraid I am going to have to hand out a little discipline. Thinking you could fool _me_ with that pathetic act?" She shook her head, now wearing a look of not-very-convincing sorrow. "My own dear great-granddaughter thinks I've become blind and senile with age. Obviously I've been remiss in your training, if that's how far your opinion of me has fallen."

Shampoo just smiled merrily back, not cowed in the slightest by this half-hearted remonstrance. "Could beat me hundred times in row at shogi. That would prove Great-Grandmother is still too too far ahead of Shampoo."

"You're suggesting endless games of shogi?" Cologne now wore a look of uneasiness, which she wasn't completely faking. "There's less time to lose than I thought. Best we get you and Son-in-law both away from Genma as soon as possible."

-----------------------

From his position on the rooftop, Ranma stared into the sky. Three hours ago, a lifetime ago, it had been clear, but now in the west a ragged patchwork of clouds interrupted the endless expanse. The sun was sinking low, and its dying light painted those clouds in bands of orange and crimson. Off in the east, these colors faded to a deep blue just beginning to hint at purple. It was a beautiful sight, if you liked that sort of thing.

Ranma noted the colors and the clouds, but none of that was why he watched the sky. For a very long time in his life, there had only been three constants. One was the Art, the driving force of his life. His time in Nerima had taught him many things, and one lesson Ranma had come to learn, one truth which he grasped at least dimly by now, was just how much he'd sacrificed in order to become who he was. His classmates, Akane included, were utterly familiar with many things that were mysteries to him. To them, he was the mystery, a source of wonder and awe, a little piece of the unknowable. Guys like Hiroshi and Daisuke might hang out with him at Furinkan, girls too numerous to count might give him those covert longing looks, but there was always a barrier there. Ranma suspected there always would be. If the price of removing those walls was becoming like everybody else, then he knew they weren't coming down in his lifetime.

The second constant in his life was Genma. His father, his teacher, his rival, his guide, his antagonist, his source of a hundred 'what to do' lessons, and a thousand in what NOT to do. Genma had a number of qualities that irritated Ranma to varying degrees, ranging all the way from 'annoying fly buzzing around my head' to 'oops, I just fell onto a hornet's nest in a patch of poison ivy'. He was the source of more problems than Ranma cared to count. When not teaching his son the Art, he was lazy, cowardly, a glutton (sometimes he managed that one even when he was teaching), and ready at all times to make up for past mistakes by pushing his only son forward to deal with them.

On the other hand, his father had been always been there for him as best he could, helping him out when the going got tough. The advice wasn't always good, the help not entirely one hundred percent effective, but even as recently as the challenge with Natsume and Kurumi the elder Saotome had still managed to aid his son in a time of difficulty. Genma was the source, directly or indirectly, of the vast majority of everything he'd learned to be. Considering how well Ranma himself had turned out, he couldn't ultimately claim his old man had done that bad a job. He'd rather openly two-time Akane with Kodachi Kuno than admit that to the old panda, though.

The Art and Genma were more or less intertwined, if not quite to the extent they'd been during his trip. However, his father was nowhere near Ranma's thoughts just now, and the Art itself was only in peripheral focus. It was the third faithful companion in his life that held his attention.

As if seeing it for the first time he stared up into the sky, the limitless vista that had looked down on him no matter where he went. Japan, China, Malaysia, India, Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, Texas—he'd passed through them all with his father in their long quest to perfect their Art. The sights had changed around them as they went, sometimes subtly, sometimes dramatically. Even the stars had shifted in their courses as the duo ranged farther and farther from the Home Islands. But the stars were far away, so distant from his life that even as he looked up at night and watched them, some of the lights he saw above him were long dead. Or so they'd told him at Furinkan, anyway.

The sky itself wasn't so far removed. Every time he jumped, taking one of those leaps that ordinary people would swear were impossible, he brushed against it. He wasn't sure just how much of his own spin Genma had put on the teachings he'd received from Happosai, but one thing was certain—his father had done an enormously better job in forming his branch of Anything Goes than had Soun Tendo. Even after all this time, Ranma wasn't sure just what the Tendo branch favored; it seemed to be largely weapon-based, but Akane's lack of training and of commitment to the Art, along with her father's broken emotional state, meant that he just didn't know what Tendo Anything Goes was really supposed to be. Whatever it was, he was firmly convinced it paled in comparison to the Art his father had passed along to him... and a big part of that Art was their command of aerial combat. Some of his rivals (and suitors) could probably equal his jumps for sheer height; that was just a natural extension of building up chi and allowing it to empower one's moves. But only Happosai and Cologne could match a Saotome in midair battle.

Ranma stared up into the sky, and a slow grin curved across his face. "Let's see any of you keep up with me now."

No more half measures. No more being limited to stretching his skill to its uttermost just for a few seconds of extra air time. No more looking up into the sky as a distant friend. That ultimate symbol of freedom that had been with him so long, so close and yet so far away, just barely within range of brushing his fingertips against it for the merest whisper of contact—if any of what Shampoo had said was true, it was now his. His world, his territory, his playground.

He was currently standing on top of the tallest building near the bathhouse where Shampoo had changed his life. He'd brought the soap she'd given him, along with a cask full of ordinary cold water. He picked this up, removed the top, and, mindful of the Amazon's warning not to let it fall on him as the change eliminated his grip, held it out and hurled its contents onto his chest.

"Note to self," Ranma grumbled a moment later, as he struggled within the folds of his suddenly-far-too-large-and-sopping-wet clothing, "remove shirt first next time."

The transformed teen worked his way free, took a few steps away from his clothes, and began fluffing the water out of his feathers. The movement came instinctively and felt utterly natural, which wasn't all that much of a surprise. He'd already known from first- and second-hand experience that a Jusenkyo curse gave the recipient immediate magical familiarity with the new body. No way otherwise could Genma have jumped out of the Spring of Drowned Panda and balanced on a pole. Ranma-chan herself had had no balance issues with her accursed new form, and so now Ranma wasn't surprised to find he knew just what to do in this falcon's body.

Once his feathers were dry, he tested the breeze, moved to the edge of the building... and took flight.

Immediately he learned the difference between a human chi-powered leap and the true, unlimited freedom Shampoo and Jusenkyo had given him. Later, he would think back with a better appreciation for just how hard it must have been for her to find the right words to describe this. Everything she'd said was true, and it only began to scratch the surface. But for that first moment, and for a very long string of eternal, timeless moments afterward, all conscious thought fled, and Ranma simply existed.

As he cast himself away from the building, it was as if the wind underwent a transformation worthy of Jusenkyo. No longer did it brush past him and buffet him; it was instead a near-solid force, warm and comforting and bracing all at once, surrounding him, bearing him up. He could feel every nuance of the air as it swirled past his feathers, eddies and currents ready to be reshifted by the most subtle of movements. With a twitch he curved his flight away from its previous path, turning toward a rising current of air that he could sense several meters away. Not content to wait even long enough to reach it, he brought his wings down in powerful sweeps that pumped him higher, and higher yet. It felt like the heartbeat of the air itself, as if the sky were alive and welcoming him up into it.

Then he was in the rising thermal, relaxing for the moment as he allowed the wind to do the work. He soared higher and higher, controlling his flight by angling his wings, basking in the euphoria of a freedom greater than he'd ever know—or even thought to dream. This was a power and a glory and a majesty that he'd only ever touched before in those moments when he was at the absolute zenith of his skill, submerged so deeply into the Art that nothing else mattered and all awareness faded.

The thermal petered out a few hundred feet up. Ranma coasted out of it, pumping his wings again, driving himself along now rather than letting the wind do all the work. Not that he fought the currents of the air; even in his current state, with all conscious thought several hundred feet behind him and nowhere near catching up, Ranma knew that wasn't the way to go. He moved in tune with the wind, flying now in a long, looping spiral, now in a straight line with his wings beating for more altitude, now in a lazy glide as he searched for a new thermal. He rode the currents higher and higher, soaring to the north, diving to the south, east for a bit of level flight, then a long climb again to the west.

By the time enough of the rush had worn off to allow conscious thought, the sun was halfway below the horizon, and Ranma was so high in the sky that he could no longer make out details on the ground.

The Saotome heir gave a long, whistling sigh of contentment. _'Everything Shampoo said, and more. Man, this is cool. I almost wish I could stay up here all night.'_ He didn't feel as if he'd expended much of his energy reserves yet, probably because the wind was doing the main work of fighting gravity's burden. Ranma felt quite sure that he could fly all night if he wanted to. On the other hand, that likely wouldn't lead to a very good reception at the Tendo home the next day.

Not that he was looking forward to that reception anyway. Edit things though he might, Akane was bound to assume both he and Shampoo got to see each other's goods during this whole 'show him her new curse and let him get a new one too' episode. He'd be lucky if she didn't accuse him of getting it on with the Amazon in their cursed forms. Ranma shook his head as best he could while cruising several thousand feet in the air. Sometimes he wondered what it would take to make Akane not assume the ridiculous, unbelievable worst of him. Probably a few weeks of Xi Fang Gao blend number infinity or something.

None of these thoughts really had any power to bring his mood down, though. Not here, not now. He pushed thoughts of truculent tomboys out of his mind, returning his focus to immediate concerns. As has already been mentioned, he was currently so high up that the landscape of Japan below him was a patchwork of blurred details, far too far away for any landmarks smaller than Mt. Fuji itself to be discernable. Ranma began sailing lower in slow sweeping arcs, thoughts straying once more. Seeing the land like this was certainly an experience unlike anything he'd ever experienced before, and yet it had a certain bewildering sense of familiarity to it.

Wondering what he was feeling, Ranma slowed his flight further. He was lower now, and some details were becoming discernable. There, off to one side and just barely visible through the gathering dark, he saw the curve of a river. In another direction, he made out the forested, mountainous area where he'd trained several times, and recognized the general direction that would take him back to Nerima. Almost absentmindedly he corrected his course, sailing toward home while still concentrating on just why this experience was tugging at his memory.

A couple thousand feet of lost altitude later, he finally made the connection. It wasn't any one memory that he had been recalling; rather, it was the whole grand mélange of them, all the strange vistas and far away lands through which he and his father had passed. At the age of seventeen, Ranma Saotome had traveled further than many people would in a lifetime. He knew better than anyone else at Furinkan just how large the world truly was, how vast and varied and interesting. Seeing the great spread of landscape all at once from a bird's-eye view, witnessing the whole of it so far away, unfamiliar areas every bit as easily accessible as his usual stomping grounds, that was what had struck this chord in his soul.

Ironically enough, it was the ending of the sensation that brought this realization. He was now low enough to make out the individual sights of Nerima, though still too high for anyone there to spot him. Without even realizing it, Ranma halted his descent, maintaining his current altitude while puzzling over these new thoughts. Seeing the town before him felt odd, compared to the former sensations recognizable now by their absence.

_'This place... from up here, it seems so small... have I really stayed here so long?'_ It was an odd thought, but also quite compelling. He stared down at the city before him, watched as lights winked on against the coming of dusk, and contemplated it. Nerima was the craziest place he'd ever encountered, full of strange characters, wacky variations of the Art, challengers and challenges galore. It certainly made for an intense change from his long training journey; one thing Ranma knew his father deserved full credit for was how he'd almost always kept them one step ahead of the strangeness (until Jusenkyo, anyway). All the training and the trials he'd gone through had prepared him for the challenges of Nerima, but not its sheer 'weird' factor.

They'd been here longer now than Ranma could ever remember staying in one place. Furthermore, Genma had made it clear that this was it, the last stop in the line, the end of the trail. Here, now, riding the wind and looking down at the buildings, so small beneath his gaze, the people entering and exiting them little more than specks, Ranma realized something very important. His father might be ready to settle down like a great big lazy panda doing its best impression of a rug before the fire, but he still wanted more. Nerima, for all its madcap challenges and general fiery chaos, was becoming too small to hold him.

These feelings had been growing for some time now, he sensed. Ranma had no idea when they'd had their genesis. Even now they weren't truly developed yet; from the echoes he felt, it likely would have taken months of his normal life before they'd grown enough to become obvious. If those months had held multiple training trips, or race-far-away-to-save-a-kidnapped-Akane episodes, it might have taken even longer. It wasn't that he wanted to abandon Nerima, it was just that the place in and of itself had begun to feel stale. Confining. Shampoo's gift had bootstrapped him to a new level of awareness, letting him see these things far more clearly than he could have even twenty-four hours ago.

He flew in silence for a time, circling Nerima, looking thoughtfully down. It was small, true, especially from his present bird's-eye view or the perspective of his past. However, it was also important. All the people he cared about and who cared about him either lived here, lived nearby, or, in Ryoga's case, came here as often as they could. It wasn't that he wanted to leave, Ranma realized, it was more that he didn't want to be chained down here. What he wanted, what he needed, what he darn well wasn't going to let anyone take from him, was the freedom to come and go. To leave at such times as it was appropriate, and to return home at journey's end. But there never would be a permanent end to those journeys, or at least he would never be truly happy if such an end should come.

He gave a shrill cry of determination and triumph at making such an important connection, and swooped into a dive. Nerima had changed before his eyes now. It was welcoming, not confining. After all, he didn't have to let it rule his life, was under no obligation to regard these borders as a boundary line to his existence. Shampoo's gift to him made it easier to sail away to freedom when he wanted, Ranma thought with ironclad conviction, but that was all it did. He owed the Amazon for putting him in a position to realize all these things, but even if she'd never gone back to Jusenkyo, it wouldn't change the truth he'd seen. The choice to stay or go was his, with or without a facilitating far-ranging free-flying falcon form. He was Ranma, the Wild Horse, and nobody would ever tie him down or ground him. Not his father, not his foes, and for sure not his fiancées. _'Let the tomboy pitch a fit about the latest developments! Ranma Saotome backs down for nobody!'_

By now he had descended well below the heights of the tallest buildings in the district. Ranma sailed along, sinking lower and lower, and came down to a landing on the very rooftop from which he'd started, the maneuver as graceful as if he'd lived as a raptor all his life.

He took one step toward his abandoned clothes, and facefaulted with an utter absence of any grace at all.

"Oh, man! I forgot all about that! What the heck am I gonna do?!" His clothes were here, true enough, but hot water was conspicuous by its absence. "Geez, I shoulda paid better attention to Shampoo's example. Hmm. Maybe I could go to the Cat Café..." Ranma considered that thought, then discarded it. If Mousse was there and not stuck as a duck in a cage, that could be very hazardous to his health. Besides, grateful to Shampoo though he might be, he was nowhere near foolish enough to be caught naked in her home base.

Fly back to the Tendos then, and pantomime a request for hot water from Kasumi? P-chan notwithstanding, it shouldn't take her too long to realize this was no animal but someone with a Jusenkyo curse. On the other hand, that would inevitably mean he'd end up flashing her, and as sure as the sun rises in the east, Akane would pick that very moment to walk in and go nuclear. He'd survived worse, of course, but it was still no fun—and he didn't want to traumatize poor innocent Kasumi like that.

"Ucchan's? Sure she'd spatula me for embarrassing her, but it wouldn't be nearly as bad as Akane... oh, wait, she's outta town." Ukyo was visiting family in Kansai and not expected back for at least a week. And Dr. Tofu's was out of the question; Kasumi must have gone by to return something or other, because as he'd sailed through the final stretch of air toward his landing, he'd seen Tofu and Betty doing the skeleton saraband through an alley. "Dang it, this sucks!"

Ranma determined then that the first order of business, after explaining his new curse to everyone, would be to help Kasumi set up some kind of hot water dispenser a falcon could operate. Maybe in the dojo, for a combination of easy access and reasonable privacy. "Wonder how much of a pain this is for Ryoga..." He'd seen the Lost Pig maneuver a kettle on top of a kerosene stove and heat water for his transformation, but since Ryoga carried those supplies in his pack, such a method was of no help here.

After a few more minutes of thought, he made the best of a bad set of options. Flying back to the bathhouse was easy enough, as was gaining access. Turning on a hot water tap with his talons was rather a challenge, but he managed it without too much trouble. Streaking (in more ways than one) back from the bathhouse rooftop to the one on which he'd left his clothes was no fun at all, but at top speed he was little more than a blur and a couple of empty basins from the bathhouse served to cover the important areas. And after tonight there ought always to be hot water available back at the Tendo place, so a repeat of this little incident shouldn't be nearly as risky or embarrassing.

_'Still,'_ he thought, _'I wonder how much Shampoo would want in exchange for teaching me to store a kettle and stove.'_

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Author's notes

The title of this story and the title of this chapter both come from a book I read way back in the halcyon days of my youth. It was a story about a very clumsy boy who did a favor for a magician and was rewarded with a magical salve and an incantation (two lines of which are the source of the aforementioned titles) that would allow him to grow a huge pair of functional wings. Of course, new ability of flight plus extreme clumsiness equals lots and lots of bruises. Hence, the title of that book: Black and Blue Magic.

Yes, I didn't know better than to expose myself to such horrible puns in my formative years. Explains a lot, doesn't it?

I should acknowledge here that I have seen a couple of other stories where Ranma receives a falcon curse. However, those are AU's where things happened differently all the way back at Jusenkyo, not a case of Ranma switching his girl curse for what he would consider a better one. I'm sure some readers are disappointed at the loss of Ranma-chan, but I'm confident that Ranma himself would make this decision if given the opportunity, at least under such circumstances as I've outlined here. Remember that this is the anime, not the manga, and Nodoka has never learned just what's really keeping her apart from her son.

I hope it doesn't seem too contrived that Ranma and Shampoo can understand one another when both are in their cursed forms. I try to work with ideas that aren't widely used, and in all the Ranma fanfiction I've read I've only seen something like this one mentioned once, in Wade Tritschler's Most Unlikely of Friends. And he didn't actually use it, he just had Akane disappointed to learn that even with her own recently-acquired cat curse she and Shampoo couldn't understand one another when in feline form.

Credit where credit's due: the 'Slutzenin' reference appeared before this in DB Sommer's story 'The Things We Wish For'. Thanks to those at the Refuge who gave C&C. And one final note about subsequent chapters before I go: don't read too much into Cologne's last line of dialogue. That's just her indulging in witty banter, not a clue that I plan to make this a Genma-bashing fic. One goal of the final scene was to offset this purely negative reference to him. I believe in giving every character their fair shake, which is probably the root and heart of why I don't write Ranma-Akane stories.


	2. A Season of Storms

Dream of the Earthbound

A Ranma ½ fanfic by Aondehafka

Disclaimer: Ranma ½ and its characters and settings belong to Rumiko Takahashi, Shogakukan, Kitty, and Viz Video. This story based on the anime, not the manga.

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Chapter 2: A Season of Storms

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Kasumi moved through the kitchen with the ease of long practice, her actions deceptively brief and understated. She adjusted the heat under the noodles, checked the broth and decided against adding more salt, and began chopping some freshly-washed vegetables. A casual observer would have walked away with a cheerful smile after viewing the sight, pleased and gratified by the image of the dutiful beautiful girl taking pride in caring for her family.

All of that was certainly true, but someone skilled at the art of observation would have seen further, understood more. Would have noted that the girl who moved along so carelessly did so at nearly the limits of human efficiency. A team of motion study experts brought in to study the eldest Tendo daughter's performance might have managed to find ways for her to shave a few seconds off her time while still accomplishing the same results, but that would be the limit of their success. Kasumi Tendo had spent many years at her tasks, had focused all her abilities toward them, and by now she was the undisputed Tendo Queen of the Kitchen.

Because of this, a performance such as tonight's took very little of her concentration. If she had been devoting her entire awareness to the tasks before her, those motion study experts would have thrown up their hands in defeat (that or fought a duel for the privilege of courting her). But tonight there were other things which drew Kasumi's thoughts, other concerns weighing upon her. This was hardly an unusual occurrence; when the Saotomes first walked into their lives, they brought with them an endless parade of strange and thought-provoking events, and every one of the Tendo family had had to learn to cope.

Kasumi had watched all of them react in their own unique ways. She believed that her response had been the best and most sensible, which was just par for the course around here. Nabiki had shifted her games into overdrive with the new resources available to her, and Akane had grown far more ready to lash out in anger at whatever displeased her. Father alternated between emotional extremes, going much higher at the good times than his daughter could remember, and sinking lower in the bad. But Kasumi herself had stood like a rock, a smile on her face and a soft, welcoming word for anyone whose path she crossed. Despite all the changes and chaos, the floors still needed to be swept, the furo scrubbed, the laundry done, the food cooked, and a thousand other chores completed. All these things were where she found her peace and her center.

It was when she was engaged in those household duties that she felt most able to think about other things, the soothing, satisfying work forming a powerful counterpoint to what would otherwise have been some frightening, unpleasant developments. Kindness, service, and optimism were her shield, a guard that she often wished she could share with the others. Whenever Akane slapped Ranma and stalked away seething with anger, whenever he walked away from her with that tightness in the muscles of his jaw, neck, and back that was the only real clue to how hurt and angry he was, whenever Ryoga, Mousse, or another rival arrived to challenge Ranma and lose, whenever Shampoo, Ukyo, or Kodachi came by to hurt themselves again in trying to pull Akane's fiancé away for themselves, whenever any of a hundred hurtful things happened, Kasumi's own heart ached at seeing the needless pain and sorrow. If only they understood what she did! But there was no way she could teach them; such things could not be taught at all, only learned.

The eldest Tendo always did her best to comfort and care for those around her and serve as a positive example, in the hopes that some of them might learn for themselves. Seldom did she intervene more directly than that, and even when she did she'd seen precious few of those times accomplish anything worthwhile. Making Akane promise not to hit anyone in anger, chastising Nabiki for her actions when she played at being Ranma's fiancée—neither of these had ultimately done any good at all. Persuading Akane to accompany Ranma on that trip as a form of bridal training—from what she'd heard afterward, that had been worse than useless, as her little sister's presence had made the situation even more volatile between Ranma and Ryoga. Certainly Akane herself had been none too happy after it was all over and she was describing the debacle to her family.

With a track record like that, it was no wonder that Kasumi was reluctant to try to interject her own voice into the din of those shouting out at any given time, each clamoring for their own favored path to be the one taken. It was better to leave that strife and striving to others, be there when they needed her, and watch events from her place of peace on the sidelines.

The events she'd witnessed this afternoon certainly hadn't been very peaceful. Kasumi's long years of housekeeping meant that she didn't even hear the bubbling and steaming and hissing of the dishes cooking around her, at least not unless something started to go wrong. None of those sounds registered at all, but by contrast she could plainly hear the faint kiais and crunches of her little sister's practice in the dojo. Kasumi heaved a nearly undetectable sigh, as she noted that Akane's current battle cries carried a noticeably higher measure of anger than they had when she first went out there. Try though she might, Akane wasn't succeeding any longer in working off her temper, nor did Kasumi think there was any chance of that so long as Ranma stayed away.

She had overheard the discussion between Nabiki and Akane earlier, sighing a little at her baby sister's paranoia, and then the one they'd had an hour later when Akane's patience had reached its limit. To this day Kasumi had never decided just which of her sisters was the more possessive; since each chose such different sorts of things as the object of that trait, it was difficult to make a comparison. It was one of the things Kasumi preferred not to think about, but she was very aware of how utterly unwilling Akane was to allow Ranma to spend time unsupervised with any other girl. That Shampoo had called him away and he'd gone, and especially that he was taking so long to return, these were things calculated to drive Akane's temper very high very quickly. Frankly, Kasumi was a little surprised it had taken Akane as long as an hour to approach Nabiki and ask her to turn out her lackeys to hunt Ranma down.

They'd failed utterly in that, but one of them had located Shampoo, staying well back and watching as the Amazon took on Pantyhose Taro. Nabiki's friend had watched long enough to be sure that Ranma was nowhere nearby, then reported this back to Nabiki, who had in turn relayed it to the youngest Tendo. The knowledge that wherever Ranma was, he wasn't with Shampoo was enough to placate Akane. Kasumi and Nabiki both had known that she was still irritated at him for staying away this long, and at Shampoo for having caused it by whatever she wanted to tell him, but she was content to remain home and try to burn off her anger through a workout.

It would even have worked, if Ranma hadn't taken so long to come back. Kasumi herself was feeling the mild regret that was the closest she ever really came to irritation. It was now well past their usual time for dinner. She'd deliberately started preparations much later than usual and worked slowly, not wanting Ranma to come home to find everyone had eaten without him. It would have been nice if he'd thought to call home and tell her when to expect his return. Nice, and completely unprecedented, so Kasumi hadn't gotten her hopes up. And fifteen minutes ago, when Nabiki entered the kitchen on her fifth snack run and gave her sister a wounded, betrayed look practically swimming in remorse, Kasumi had caved in. If Ranma didn't return in the next ten minutes, he was just going to have to accept whatever leftovers he could get.

"I'm home!" The call came from the front entranceway, accompanied by the closing of the door. Kasumi shook her head with a smile of self-reproof. She really should have known better. When push came to shove, her sister's fiancé could always be trusted not to miss out on the food.

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Ranma took a few steps into the house, then paused and sucked in a long, deep breath. In its own way, Kasumi's cooking smelled just as wonderful as had the crisp, clean air high above the limits of the Tokyo smog. Some days it was just good to be alive.

He proceeded into the living room, where he found Nabiki reading a manga. "Hmmm, you're finally back," she observed.

The pigtailed teen grunted his assent. "When's dinner? I'm starving!"

"Oh, really. You are aware that it's well past dinner time, right Ranma?" Nabiki favored him with a stony glare. "A word to the wise, Saotome, and I suggest you listen in too. Next time you pull a stunt like this, we're eating it all before you bother to slink home."

Ranma smirked back at her. "You do, an' I'll ask Akane to cook dinner the next night to make up for it, and then I'll skip out again and leave the rest of ya holding the bag."

Nabiki's eyes bulged to a ridiculous degree, and she would have staggered if she weren't currently sitting on the couch. _'Did... did he just... did I just get verbally worsted by a Saotome?!'_ The Saotome in question gave her an odd look, wondering just why Nabiki's hair was all toinged out and her lower jaw was dangling loose, then walked past her and onward to the kitchen.

"Smells great, Kasumi!" Ranma said gleefully. If the fact that he'd nearly managed to destroy two individuals' worldviews today bothered him, he gave no sign of it. "Thanks for holding dinner for me."

"You're welcome, Ranma," the eldest Tendo daughter replied. "Akane's in the dojo practicing. Would you tell her that you're back now and dinner will be ready in a few minutes?"

"No prob," Ranma answered. Sticking his head out the window, he yelled, "HEY, AKANE!! QUIT SMASHING STUFF AND COME ON IN FOR DINNER!"

"Thank you very much," Kasumi said sweetly as he pulled his head back in. "Would you like to set the table for me?"

"If it means we get to eat sooner, then count me in!" Ranma quickly washed his hands, gathered up the necessary items, and retreated to the dining room, amusing himself by performing the requested task at Amaguriken speed. This of course didn't take long at all, and he spent the next few minutes in peace and quiet, except for the rumbling of his stomach.

"So where were you this afternoon, anyway? What took so long?" He turned to find that Akane had settled for the minimalist variety of cleaning up after her workout. She'd run a towel over her face and changed out of her sweaty gi, putting on a fresh one. Her hands were clenched unconsciously at her sides, and while her expression wasn't a full-blown scowl, she was definitely displeased. "What was Shampoo's 'big, important news'?"

"It's a long story, and I ain't gonna get into it until after dinner," he answered. _'No way am I gonna waste a perfectly good Kasumi-homecooked meal, and Akane's bound to pound me once she hears everything. No matter how good I try to tell it, Nabiki's gonna point out that there had to be a couple of skin scenes, what with Shampoo showing me her new curse and getting rid of my old one.'_ He'd known even as he did it that mouthing off to Nabiki would ultimately have its price, but as far as he was concerned the look on her face had been worth it.

"Why don't you tell us now, Saotome." Nabiki's tone made it clear this wasn't a request. He looked away from Akane's challenging glare, focusing instead on the middle Tendo. She had recovered almost completely from her bout with neural cascade failure. Several hairs were still sticking out from her pageboy cut, but otherwise she was back to normal, giving him that sharp, piercing stare he'd seen so many times. "Kasumi's dinners happen every day—or at least I wish they did," she mumbled under her breath, too low for a certain younger sibling to hear, "but it's certainly not every day that you drop everything and go off alone with the Queen of the Amazons for who knows how much private quality time."

"You really want to know, Nabiki?" Ranma asked, frowning back at her. It had not escaped his attention that every word of her last sentence had been making Akane angrier. "Okay, fine." His frown transformed into a hard-edged smirk as he held out his hand. "That'll be five thousand yen." His smile grew wider and happier as Nabiki's eyes bulged, her hair toinged, and her jaw dropped once more.

Akane had no real idea how to handle this. On the one hand, that was the exact sum Nabiki had taken off her for a certain request earlier this afternoon, which gave her a sense of satisfaction in watching this little bit of turnabout. On the other, witnessing Ranma stand up to Nabiki felt rather surreal, especially since he'd managed to give such a good account of himself. He was cheerful, confident, exuberant... and all these things had to have come from whatever happened with Shampoo.

For a moment that thought brought the beginnings of blistering anger, mixed in with something less pleasant from which Akane instinctively shied away. Then she reminded herself that Ranma hadn't spent anywhere near all his time with Shampoo this afternoon. Maybe Shampoo had actually been defeated by Pantyhose, she thought with a sudden surge of hope. If Ranma were no longer tied to her by Amazon law, that would certainly account for this happiness. He could still be just as perverted with her as before, Shampoo had made it clear to the meanest intelligence that as far as she was concerned that law was only an excuse to go after Akane's fiancé, but Three Thousand Years of Amazon History (i.e., Cologne) would no longer be a threat hanging over his head. _'I really, really hope that's it. Why shouldn't I get lucky for once?'_

"Yo, Akane. You just doze off or something?" Ranma's query woke her from her musings.

"What? No. I was just wondering... seriously, though, Ranma, what," she began, only to be cut off by Kasumi's cheerful "Dinner is ready!"

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"Man, Kasumi, that was great!" The first to start eating and the last to finish, even Ranma had now had his fill. He'd concentrated wholeheartedly on devouring his dinner, and thus had been able to ignore Akane's fidgeting and Nabiki's hooded stares.

"I'm glad you enjoyed it, Ranma." The eldest Tendo beamed back at him. "Would you help me carry the dishes back to the kitchen?"

"No, he won't!" Akane proclaimed. "He's going to tell us what happened with Shampoo today!"

"Excuse me, tomboy," Ranma retorted. "Kasumi just asked for help with the dishes. Grab a few and help me out if you want it to mean less of a delay."

"The lunkhead has a point, Akane," Nabiki noted, distracted for the moment from her own annoyance at the pigtailed boy. Wasn't it just like her clueless baby sister to create more work for Kasumi, or Nabiki herself for that matter, without even thinking about it. "Let's all take our own stuff back to the kitchen."

"Fine, whatever," Akane grumbled, gathering up her fair share of the dishes and plates.

A few minutes later, Ranma, Akane, and Nabiki were in the living room. "Now spill it, Saotome," the middle Tendo requested.

"Waiting on Kasumi," he replied, just as the girl in question entered the room carrying the kettle and bathrobe he'd asked her to bring. "Thanks, Kasumi. Hmmm, where should I start?"

"Tell us what Shampoo wanted, dummy!" This was Akane. "Then you can tell what took you so long to get back here afterward." _'And why you've been in such a strange mood all this time...'_

"Okay, yeah, start with Shampoo. You guys know that she an' the old ghoul have been outta town for the last couple of weeks." All the girls nodded, even Kasumi, which somehow didn't surprise Ranma. "Well, they went back to China to take care of some business. And while they were there, they made a pit stop at a certain cursed training ground."

He continued speaking after that, but one girl no longer heard his words. As that last sentence registered, Akane felt her heart constrict to a frozen lump in her chest. _'No... no... he can't... it can't be... please, no, it's not fair! Shampoo can't have cured her curse!'_

It was the one and only advantage she had over the Amazon, a fact that Akane had always hated—until now, at least. This was what had made Ranma so happy?! The goddamned sex kitten didn't literally turn into the thing of his worst nightmares anymore?! Nothing more she could do now, when the Amazon grabbed onto _her_ Ranma and started trying to seduce him in full view of the public?! No more ace in the hole if Shampoo ever attacked her for real?! And her worthless so-called fiancé thought all this was _good_ news?!

She didn't want it to be true. She needed it not to be true, hoped with all her heart that it was just another of those frequent little misunderstandings. Maybe she was jumping to conclusions, maybe, just maybe she was seeing the worst possible outcome when the truth was nowhere near that bad. Akane tried to focus, tried to pay attention to what Ranma was saying, but the roaring in her ears was just too loud. She gulped, deliberately closed her eyes, and searched for some measure of recovery.

After an uncertain amount of time, she felt at least a little composure return. Ranma was rambling on with something that didn't make much sense. It sounded like he was describing himself fighting half of Nerima. Typical overweening Saotome pride, Akane thought, shaking her head, but at least it wasn't a paean of joy over Shampoo no longer turning into a been worse," Ranma said, in response to a sympathetic comment from Kasumi. "If it weren't for Shampoo watching out for me with her new curse, I'd've had to fight Pantyhose too."

She actually heard the entire final sentence before the significance of its first clause registered.

Once again, Ranma was speaking. She could see his lips moving, and the broad grin behind the words was painfully apparent. His speech was utterly lost on her, though, a cacophony of empty sounds so far removed from her current reality as to have no significance at all. Akane sat frozen, no emotions showing on her face, blocking out any hint of Ranma happily prattling on about the wonderful afternoon he'd had and how much better his life had suddenly become. The only coherent thought she could manage was perhaps the worst one possible: _'This cannot possibly get any worse.'_

He was looking now at Kasumi, Akane noted, saying something else that didn't register at all. As if in response, Kasumi held out the kettle she'd brought, and the final puzzle piece clicked into place.

With that, the last remnants of her anger vanished, finally extinguished under a rising icy tide of sorrow, bitterness, and dread. It wasn't enough that the Amazon had done away with her own well-deserved curse, was it? Wasn't enough that she had probably gone through all the springs and picked one that would give her some incredibly unfair advantage. Wasn't enough that Shampoo presumably now turned into something that let her go head-to-head with Pantyhose and win. No, the lavender-haired witch had to grab yet another entry for her long list of utterly unfair, unearned advantages. She had to provide Ranma with the cure he'd sought for so long. _'There's no way I can compete with that,'_ Akane thought with a bitterness she'd never matched in her life.

Ranma was moving now, arising from his position on the floor and moving over to the sofa. As if in a dream, Akane watched, certain she knew what was coming next. Sure enough, he retrieved a bucket of water which had previously been hidden on the far side of the couch. As he lifted it with a grin, she felt the faint, vaguest echo of a desire to close her eyes, to refrain from watching this moment of triumph. He would douse himself with the cold water, then with the hot, and the result would be the same either way—absolutely nothing. She could avert her gaze, clench her eyes shut, deny it for one moment longer. But what was the point? It wouldn't change anything. He would still be free and clear, due to a gift from the girl Akane had never been able to match. She felt the cold leaden certainty that nothing mattered anymore settle into her gut, displacing even the pain from before. Wondering vaguely if this was what the Soul of Ice felt like and whether she'd be able to pull off a Hiryu Shoten Ha now, she kept Ranma fully in her sight as he hurled the water forward.

It came as an enormous shock when his form melted down and disappeared into his clothes.

It was almost enough to make her feel something again.

She continued to watch, no expression on her face as she took in the sight before her. Watched as the bird of prey that had been her fiancé struggled free of his shirt. Observed as her big sister scooped up the raptor and made some inane remark, probably an exclamation over how pretty he was. To Akane, the sight of the destruction of everything that mattered hardly qualified as 'pretty', but Kasumi was Kasumi and she would never change.

Her passionless stare tracked events as Kasumi traced a finger down Ranma's back, stared admiringly at him for a long, long moment, then reluctantly set him down and reached forward with the kettle. Ranma skipped backward, cheeping in a way that was clearly negative, and Kasumi halted with a questioning look on her face. A hop, skip, and a jump took the transformed teen over to the bathrobe Kasumi had brought; he slid partially into it, gave another squawk, and nodded his head. Kasumi tilted the kettle's contents over his head, and the Saotome heir swelled back into his birth form, the robe coming along for the ride and keeping him decent throughout.

"Ranma." It was a surprise to hear herself speak, one almost as great as the sight of what had really happened when he doused himself with the cold water. Akane had no idea where the energy or the interest to ask this question was coming from; she still couldn't feel anything other than a cold muted emptiness. The words emerged nonetheless. "What new curse did Shampoo get?"

"What? Weren't you listening at all, Akane?!" Clearly he hadn't expected a response like that. Akane just stared back at him, awaiting an answer to her question. "Like I _already said_, Shampoo changed out her old curse for a falcon one. That's why she brought back this water for me too. Geez, what else didn't you bother to listen to?"

Quite a lot, she supposed, but it wasn't as if it mattered. Akane got to her feet. "Congratulations, Ranma. Good night, everybody. I'm going to bed."

"Huh?" Ranma just stood there blinking until Akane disappeared up the stairs. "Hey, Akane, wait!" He took a half step as if to follow her, then decided against it. "What's with her?"

Nabiki made her first contribution to the conversation. She'd sat as quietly as Akane throughout, with no more clue to her emotions present. This trend continued as she got to her feet and said, calmly and collectedly, "Saotome, no matter how much thought you put into this, I guarantee you it wasn't enough." She followed in the path taken by her little sister, vanishing up the stairs.

Ranma stared helplessly after both girls, then turned back to the one remaining Tendo. "Kasumi, what's going on?"

"Oh, Ranma," she sighed. "It's nothing serious. Akane and Nabiki just need some time to get used to this. People don't just adapt right away when a big change comes along, especially one this big."

"But, couldn't they at least have said 'Congratulations', Kasumi? I mean, said it like they meant it?" Ranma asked, still trying to recover his balance. "I explained all about why I did this, what it meant to me. Why'd Akane just walk off like that?"

"I already told you, Ranma. She was surprised and she needs some time to get used to the idea. That's all."

"Huh." Ranma's jaw set mulishly. "Just another sign that Akane don't know how dumb she sounds when she says that 'I'm a martial artist too!' stuff. A real Anything Goes martial artist is all about change and adaptin' to the best stuff that comes his way." He sighed. "I guess your father's probably not gonna give three rousing cheers either, huh?"

Kasumi shook her head, then decided at least one person should give Ranma the kind of reaction such good news deserved. She gave him a smile and said, "Three thousand dousing tears is more likely, I think." Ranma sniggered, and Kasumi giggled a bit herself. "But really, Ranma, I am happy for you. You may have to wait to hear it from Akane, but I'll say it now. Congratulations."

-----------------------

After a few minutes of uneasy silence, broken only by the sound of the morning breeze rustling her hair and skirt, Manami spoke up. "Why are we out here, Boss?"

Nabiki held silent. Indeed, there was nothing to indicate she'd heard the question at all. The middle Tendo didn't budge an inch from her position at the edge of the rooftop of Furinkan, staring down into the courtyard. Manami wondered just what her friend/ally/commander-in-chief was watching for with such intensity. The most obvious guess was the arrival of Ranma and/or Akane, but why she should care about that so much this morning, why she should have dragged both Manami and Junko up to the rooftop without so much as a by-your-leave, was a mystery that couldn't be solved without more information.

"Yeah, Nabiki. We're gonna miss an opportunity if we stay up here too much longer," Junko pointed out. "You can see Kuno down there waiting for them to arrive. If we're not back in class when it happens, we won't be able to take any bets." The Blue Thunder certainly didn't challenge Ranma every day, but it happened with regularity enough that there wasn't much money to be made anymore from bets on those fights. Certainly no-one was foolish enough to bet on Kuno to win. Still, there were always a few people ready to try their luck on issues of timing, whether Ranma would win with a punch, a kick, a special technique, or whether Kuno's babble would anger Akane enough to jump in and deliver the knockout.

Manami gave a mental shake of the head. There was a reason Junko was third on the hierarchy, well below Manami herself. _'You still don't have the hang of big-picture thinking, Junko? The Boss behaving this oddly isn't enough to clue you in? For her to act like this, there has to be something serious on the horizon. And whatever it is, it's bigger than the chump change we could make back in our classroom.'_ Her gaze shifted from Junko to Nabiki. _'Wish she'd go ahead and tell us what it is.'_

She waited a few moments more, watching Nabiki expectantly. Furinkan's Ice Queen paid no more attention to Junko than she had to Manami. Her gaze stayed fixed forward and below. Her face wore an expressionless mask, which in itself was a little worrisome to Manami. If this was a good kind of something big, Nabiki should be smirking.

Faced with only silence as a response, Junko heaved a loud, melodramatic sigh, and settled down for the wait. Nabiki would have a good reason for this, she supposed, but that didn't make the time pass any quicker until she should decide to unbutton her lips and share whatever was on her mind with her cohorts.

A minute later, just as Manami was about to strike up a conversation with the friend that wasn't impersonating an ice sculpture, Nabiki stiffened ever so slightly. In an instant both remaining girls' gazes shot forward in the direction their leader was staring, locating their target in the street heading toward Furinkan, finding—without much surprise—that the object of her attention was Ranma and Akane.

Manami studied them as intently as she could, soaking up all the detail possible before they should make it into Furinkan proper where the waiting bluster of Tatewaki Kuno would destroy any chance for observation of subtle nuances. There seemed to be a curious distance between the two teens this morning. Not so much a matter of physical distance, although they were walking several feet apart, but rather a metaphysical one. It was actually coming from Akane, Manami realized after another few seconds of intense scrutiny. Ranma's expression was as open as ever, showing a mixture of general good cheer and puzzlement. The latter emotion seemed to be directed toward Akane; she saw him cast a curious, clueless look forward to his fiancée. Akane herself couldn't see this, as she was walking in front of him. From the closed, shuttered, and barred expression on Akane's face, Manami didn't think it likely that the youngest Tendo would have cared if she had seen.

Even Junko had picked up on some of this. "What's up with her, Nabiki? Did she break the engagement again?"

Once again, Nabiki ignored her lackey's questions. Once again, Manami gave a mental head-shake of reproof. Junko either hadn't paid nearly enough attention to Ranma, or she just hadn't bothered to think through what his demeanor had to mean. Whatever the problem was here, it was still a mystery to the pigtailed martial artist. _'There's a surprise,'_ Manami thought with all the sarcasm an unusually intelligent, unathletic, not-very-popular high school senior could muster.

The three girls stared in silence as first Akane, then Ranma made their way through Furinkan's gate. Manami cocked one eyebrow in quizzical detachment as she watched Akane walk straight past Kuno, ignore his greeting entirely, and disappear into the school. Kuno blinked once or twice, then focused quickly enough on Ranma. He drew himself up into his usual posture of challenge and issued a round of blowhard bluster that made both Manami and Junko wish Furinkan stood several stories higher than it did. Listening to that sort of babble had already been old two years ago, well before Ranma himself arrived in Nerima.

The last remnants of puzzlement at Akane's unusual remoteness vanished from Ranma's face, replaced by battle-readiness. The good mood glowing underneath it all was still apparent, nor did that fade even slightly as Kuno charged forward in an attack. The girls watched as Ranma employed a rather unusual tactic in his battle with Furinkan's rising young star of kendo—instead of moving in for hand-to-hand, or employing a special technique to take Kuno down hard and fast, Ranma devoted everything to some of the flashiest dodging the trio had ever seen. He bounced around like a demented sentient superball, spending far more time in the air than on the ground, jumping higher than he almost ever did in casual combat. Through it all he teased and taunted Kuno, raising the boy's temper ever higher, until at last the kendoist gave a mighty yell of rage and employed his own super leap. Manami was quite impressed at the sight; it was one thing to see Ranma hop a couple of stories into the air, but that was a feat she'd not thought Tatewaki Kuno capable of matching.

Surprise her though he might with the height of his jump, Kuno's performance in the resulting midair duel was no shock at all. Ranma easily twisted around the kendoist's strike, grabbed hold of him, spun the both of them in midair, and then launched his prey on a flight far higher. Kuno sailed up, up, and away on a course that would certainly drop him at least a mile away from Furinkan. Manami imagined that if she'd been listening closely, she could have heard the snap as the rules of physics were broken once again.

Ranma dropped sedately to the ground, grinning and cheerful and utterly unconcerned at violating at least one law of motion. Whistling a carefree tune, he strode into the school building. Manami noticed Nabiki's hand clenching and unclenching at her side. It wasn't a very pronounced reaction, but as this was the first real break in the Ice Queen's silent unmoving façade, the gesture was as noticeable to Manami as if Nabiki had given a rebel yell and launched a water balloon over the edge at Ranma.

"You don't know how tempted I was to lob a water balloon at that idiot," Nabiki remarked.

"That would be funny," Junko replied. "Even if you don't have any training of your own, Mr. Big Bad Martial Artist probably wouldn't have been able to dodge it. He never does have much luck avoiding water, does he?"

"No, he doesn't. And his luck is even worse when it comes to avoiding attacks from angry girls," Nabiki said, biting the words off.

"Will you go ahead and tell us what Ranma's done now?" Manami asked, feeling fairly confident in at least that much of her deductions. "How big is it? How much of an impact is it going to have on us?"

"How big. How much impact." Nabiki gave one of those dry, sardonic laughs that let everyone in earshot know just how little amusement you're really feeling. "Hmmm. Where do I begin? How about... this!" From out of nowhere she produced an old poster for one of Ranma's long-ago challenge matches. The poster was emblazoned with a drawing of Ranma-chan in a very skimpy outfit. Nabiki gripped the paper and with one convulsive movement, ripped it clean in two.

Junko paled noticeably. "You don't mean he's cured his curse?!"

"No. That would be bad enough, but I wouldn't be this pissed," Nabiki growled. "After all, he's worked so long and fought so hard so many times for a cure, and they've all slipped just barely through his grasp. If one of them finally did land in his lap, there's no way in heaven or earth he wouldn't use it. That's just something I always looked at as one of those unavoidable long-shot risks, like a meteor hitting your house or something."

"Then what did happen?" Manami wanted to know, irked that Junko had made such a good guess before she could, and annoyed all the more that Nabiki's response hadn't made it clear to the real brain here just what was happening.

"He didn't cure it. The brainless hunk of beef _changed_ it," Nabiki spat. "Shampoo and Cologne came back yesterday. Seems they went to China and Jusenkyo, and finally washed away Little Miss Lavender's greatest disadvantage. No more turning into a cat for her, no more terrifying her 'husband' with a splash of cold water. Shampoo now turns into a falcon, and according to Ranma she got such a kick out of being able to fly that she decided to offer a cask full of water from her new spring to him."

"He... he took her up on it?!" Manami could scarcely believe it. Sure, she knew that Ranma didn't much like his female form, but at least even when transformed she had still been an unstoppable juggernaut of martial arts fury. She'd never have thought he would give that up for a body that would make flight the only option if he got splashed in mid-battle. What was he going to do the next time a challenge came up with Ryoga, or Mousse, or Tatewaki, or... heck, even Gosunkugi might have the advantage in hand-to-hand combat with Ranma's new cursed form!

"He did," Nabiki confirmed bitterly. "Came waltzing home last night and told us the whole sordid story."

"Wow..." Junko breathed, her eyes wide and her expression none too happy. "This changes... this changes _everything_. Fighting odds, dating odds, marriage odds, merchandise..."

"That's it, Junko. Rub it in," Nabiki snarled. "Pour salt in my wounds. Remind me that the last batch of 'pigtailed' photos I had developed is just that—the last. Throw it right back in my face that Shampoo just stole a huge march on the competition. Dangle that lovely little nightmare scenario right in front of my eyes, where Ranma finally wakes up and realizes that his other suitors have a hell of a lot more to offer than my sister does. Hey, why don't you go find Ranma and tell it to him straight up?! 'Oh, Ranma, it's about time you realized just how much the Amazons can do for you that the Tendos can't manage. Ditch them like last week's sashimi and shack up with Shampoo!' "

"You think it's gonna be harder to get him to toe the line from now on?" Manami asked, more out of a faint hope that her boss would deny this than anything else. At least to her, it looked to be as close to a certainty as you got in this life.

"What do you think?" Nabiki retorted bitterly. "Remember the Hiryu Shoten Ha? Cologne taught Ranma what he needed to confront Happosai even when he was weak as a kitten, she reassembled the torn pieces of the chart, and she applied the moxibustion cure herself. Even somebody as dense as Ranma was bound to start thinking a little differently after that. And he did, ever since then he's been more willing to go to the old hag for help and advice."

"But it could have been a lot worse, right?" Manami countered. "Remember what you told me yourself, Nabiki. Akane got involved, she was right there with him the whole time, and at the climax of it all she did her usual thing, got in over her head so Ranma had to go all out to save her. Thanks to him having that to remember and take up his attention, the Amazons didn't come out all that much better than they were before. And Ukyo was there all along too, which only muddied the waters further. I bet you can work the same kind of stuff out now," she continued encouragingly.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, but I'm not a miracle worker. And quite frankly, right now I'm angry enough not to trust myself to take any action! How dare he do this!" Nabiki snarled. "How dare he jump headlong into this without thinking at all?! Did you enjoy dinner last night, Saotome, you brainless dolt?!" she demanded of the sky. "Do you know how many pictures I had to sell of your better half to pay for it? There won't be any more of that, now will there?! What the hell am I supposed to do from now on?! I don't suppose you've got answers for me, Ranma. Couldn't be bothered to think about anyone but yourself, could you? Couldn't care less about what happens when my supply runs out and Kuno-baby gets antsy for more."

"That is a problem," Junko agreed. "Maybe we could pay Sasuke to steal some of Kuno's collection and give it to us, and we could sell it back to him. He's got so many photos by now that there's no way he could possibly know them all."

"That's a good thought. Thanks, Junko," Nabiki said, although her tone and expression showed no trace of relief whatsoever. It was clear that Junko's help hadn't put even the slightest dent in her mood.

"This is really getting to you, isn't it, Boss," Manami asked quietly.

"You noticed?" Nabiki drawled. "Let me tell you just how it all went down yesterday, Manami. Shampoo caught up with him on the way home from school. Hustled him away from my sister, showed him her new curse, and made her sales pitch for joining her in the glory of the wild blue yonder. Ranma told her he needed time to think about it, went away, and spent a few hours doing that." Well, most of those three hours had been spent fighting, or so Nabiki had gathered from his story. She didn't suppose Ranma could manage three hours of uninterrupted thought if his miserable life depended on it. "At the end of that he went back to the Nekohanten and told her he wanted in." Her voice rose in an ever-sharper pitch of anger as she spoke the next sentence. "Not once in all that time did he come back home and talk about this with any of us!"

"It's not like he's ever been considerate," Manami pointed out. "At least, not if it took any real thought."

"No, but he should have known better than this," Nabiki growled. "I would have given him a hundred convincing reasons to just say no! He should have known to talk this over with people who actually know how to use their minds! Dammit, I've worked hard to build what I have today. All three of us have!" She lived her life based on the principle that brains, not a martial artist's brawn, were the real key to success. It had served her well, proving true time and time again. Nabiki Tendo had made the choices she wanted to make and done as she pleased, something just about nobody else she knew could honestly say. When she wanted to play, she played, and when she wanted the Nerima Wrecking Crew to pay, they paid. And they did it with a smile on their collective face if they knew what was good for them. This, even more than the lost opportunities, was what made Ranma's current transgression rankle so badly.

"Maybe he needs a refresher course in just how things work around here," Manami brooded. Few things in her life were as satisfying as calling the tune and forcing the various teen titans to dance as she wanted, or rather helping Nabiki to do so. She hoped her boss came up with something especially appropriate this time.

"Damn straight," the middle Tendo answered. "Striking out and making such a drastic change on his own, not even bothering to consider how inconvenient it would be for anyone else—I might have to put up with that junk from Cologne, but I'm not about to take it from him!"

"Cologne?" Junko echoed puzzledly. "What about her?"

Nabiki's mouth snapped shut, like the clap of a trap. "I don't want to talk about it," she said after a moment of bitter silence.

"Nabiki, this sounds like something we maybe should hear about," Manami said, carefully applying just as much pressure as she thought she could get away with. Her friend was showing more genuine emotion than Manami could ever remember witnessing in her before, and it was not a pretty sight. Anger, bitterness, hatred, frustration, and fear were all writ plain for the world to see across the Ice Queen's mien. Manami, for one, was very glad that the three of them were alone up here. "We're going to be doing something to pay Shampoo back for messing things up like this, right? And we're sure not going to let Ranma get away from your family without a fight. That means fighting the Amazons on that front too. If Cologne has been making threats lately, don't you think you'd better tell us?"

" 'Lately' isn't the word," Nabiki said. "This was well in the past, and by that I mean nearly a year ago. There's no reason to bring it up here. As long as we concentrate on Shampoo and don't cross the old bag of bones directly, we're in the clear."

"Umm, okay," Junko said hesitantly. "But don't you think it's not that clear-cut this time? Cologne had to have been involved in something like this. Who's to say that this whole idea wasn't hers to begin with? This could be the big push they're counting on to finally snag Ranma for good. If that's so, then fighting Shampoo might be as good as going up against the old woman too."

Nabiki said nothing in response for what seemed like quite a long time. At last, she heaved a bitter sigh, and admitted, "Like I said. Right now I'm too upset to think these things through as well as I usually do. That's why I called you up here to begin with, to tell you that for at least a couple of days we need to put a lockdown on business as usual. Things have just changed too much, too quickly, and we need to let them stabilize a bit so we can observe the situation before getting back to work."

"Shouldn't we even try to sell the news about what's happened to Ranma?" Junko protested. "That's safe enough, isn't it?"

"I really think that holding back and keeping a low profile while we plan our next move is better," Nabiki replied in tones of steel. "It's not like the best thing to do with information is always to sell it. Remember back when Ranma first arrived? I stung Kuno-baby for a measly little handful of yen before spilling the beans about Akane's engagement, and that was it. It was the biggest news Furinkan had had so far that year, and I let it go for a song. And believe me, it was the right thing to do."

"I never understood that," Manami confessed. "Just why did you do it like that, Boss?"

"It's a long story, too long to go into now," Nabiki replied. "Ask me again when things have settled down at least a little."

"Well, okay." Manami had had more than one purpose in asking her question now—Nabiki obviously believed she'd done the right thing back then for some mysterious, clever reason, so explaining the whole thing to her admiring cohorts ought to put her in a better mood. Unfortunately, her friend hadn't seen fit to rise to the bait. Manami would have preferred to get Nabiki in better spirits before asking this next question, but she didn't think she felt secure enough to postpone it. "So... what about Cologne?"

"You're not going to let this go, are you?" Nabiki returned.

"We can wait awhile if you really want us to," Junko replied. "But it sounds like something you do need to tell us before we start up operations again. Don't you think you might as well get it over with?"

"Probably. Not like my mood can get much worse," Nabiki muttered. Heaving another sigh, she spit it out. "It was back when the Amazons first set up shop here. It didn't take a lot of insight to see how much potential they had to shake things up. Only Happosai himself is worse, and back then he was still stuck in his cave.

"So anyway, I decided the smart thing to do was explore my options a bit. I dug into the legality of their being here, checked on just what measures Cologne had taken to justify her and Shampoo's settling down and opening shop. It took more than a week of research, and trips to several different places, and it all came down to one simple fact. The old woman had really done her job well. There was no way at all to attack their presence in Japan, at least within the letter of the law.

"So I'm in the library when I finally run the last lead to earth. I close the book, grumble a bit, turn in my seat—and there's Cologne right next to me, standing on top of the goddamn table looking as serene as a face like that can." Nabiki broke off, pausing for a moment to fight a fit of the shudders. "She didn't do anything so crude as threaten me. Oh, no, she just struck up an idle conversation, making pleasant chitchat about what Shampoo had been up to on her first trip to Japan.

"The old bat-out-of-hell was particularly eloquent about the Xi Fang Gao, and what a terrible technique it really was, how 'it ate holes in someone's memory, gnawing away at the one thing that a person should be able to call inviolably her own, riddling a trail of wormholes that the victim couldn't even comprehend. How terrible to have a vague awareness that something was wrong, but be completely unable to understand what', that's what she told me. I couldn't help but agree." The entire conversation was still etched indelibly into her brain, in perfect clarity. Sometimes Nabiki found herself wondering whether Cologne had snuck into her room one night and used a variation for enhancing that particular memory. She tried to fight off such suspicions, though—that way lay madness.

"That... that is terrible," Manami affirmed in a horrified whisper. Just thinking of that was bad enough, and what if the old crone's fingers should tremble ever so slightly at just the wrong moment? Her victim could end up permanently short a few dozen I.Q. points. "Thanks for warning us, Boss."

"Just so you understand the stakes here. I'm damn well not letting Ranma go without a fight," Nabiki replied bitterly. "He's too useful, too profitable—heck, he's the only thing standing between Akane and the next random kidnapper. I may not be able to go up against the Amazons directly, but I'm absolutely not going to let them just waltz away with everything they ever wanted."

"You know you can count on us," Junko said, putting as much loyalty into the words as she could muster. "It's not like we have to fight her directly, right? It's really all about Ranma and manipulating him. That's something you've got plenty of experience at."

"Thanks, Junko." Nabiki heaved a sigh, which coincided almost exactly with the buzzing of the warning bell. "Okay, ladies, I think we're done for now. Might as well head back in to class."

-----------------------

The teacher hadn't showed up yet by the time Nabiki made it to her desk. The room was filled with the muted buzz of students enjoying their last free moments to talk. Nabiki closed her eyes and tried to let that background noise distract her. Unfortunately, it simply was not enough to distance her from the darkness of her thoughts.

Trying a different tack, she deliberately cast her mind back to the one question she'd left unanswered, Manami's query as to why she'd handled the matter of Ranma's and Akane's engagement as she did. It was a bit of her best work, Nabiki had always thought. She'd let it slip out almost without asking any recompense at all, an act that was surely seen as out-of-character by many of her fellow students. She'd had good reason to do what she did, though. Even that far back, Nabiki had sensed that this newcomer, this Ranma Saotome, was going to be a red-hot commodity, a source of immense possibilities. She'd needed to demonstrate to Furinkan that she and she alone had the inside scoop on him, that he was as much hers to exploit as was Akane. As she'd expected, the freebie had more than paid for itself.

Nor was that the only reason that she'd spilled the beans so quickly about Ranma's engagement to her sister, a secret that she'd known he wanted kept. It had been a message to him, an implicit communication of the way things were going to be, the first deceptively solid strand in the web she'd woven. When she wanted him to jump through hoops, by all the kami Ranma Saotome did it. In the months and year since then she'd used the boy for her own amusement and the sustaining of her family's fragile finances; without a shred of remorse she'd exploited him for enough yen to cover the expenses caused by both him and his father. Ranma grumbled at times, but he always did as he was told in the end. And getting things off on the right foot had been a huge part of that.

There was yet another side to her decision to take the approach she had. Back then she had still been undecided on the matter of one Tatewaki Kuno. He was rich and handsome, after all, and of the right mindset that if she once gained his trust, she could thereafter get him to do anything she wanted. Not to mention the times his... unique worldview had given her a good sardonic laugh. These were assets, of course, but there were also serious disadvantages to a relationship with the Blue Thunder. Over time, Nabiki had finally decided that those cons outweighed the pros too significantly for her to bother with Kuno-baby, but back when Ranma had first arrived the decision was nowhere near settled yet. And so she had tested just how serious Tatewaki's attachment was to Akane, by cheerfully destroying the secret little sister had so wanted kept. Served Akane right, too, for refusing Nabiki's offer to hold silent for the low, low price of ten thousand yen. Akane hadn't taken the request seriously at all, but after that day she knew better.

As she'd hoped, the memories of her well-played triumph did indeed improve her mood. The middle Tendo had enjoyed a minute of much-needed calmness when the door opened and Tatewaki finally made his entrance.

Although Nabiki had watched Ranma end the fight without ever once landing a directly-damaging blow against the Blue Thunder, she had been mildly curious as to whether he would survive the landing unscathed. Apparently all the times he'd flown via Akane's or Ranma-chan's punts had stood him in good stead today; Kuno strode into the classroom with no sign of pain or difficulty at all. In fact, there was even a smile on his face.

"Morning, Kuno-baby," she said as he sat down beside her, taking a bit of satisfaction as her pet name for him caused his expression to dim.

"It is indeed morning, a morn on which the gods and their chosen favored smile," Kuno replied, his own grin widening again midway through the sentence. "Did you witness my triumph, Nabiki Tendo?"

She blinked. "Your triumph? This morning? Are you feeling okay, Kuno-baby?"

"Never better. This morning I proved that the strength of Saotome's dark magics, though still fierce, finally begins to wane. He could not defeat me, and was forced to cast me through the upper air, in desperation removing himself from my august presence. And it didn't hurt at all, not even the landing!" Kuno reared back in his chair and let loose with a peal of laughter. "Not that it ever does hurt," he added, regaining his composure.

"Riiiight," Nabiki drawled. _'Okay, where's the sensei, I think I've had well over my recommended daily allowance of Kuno.'_

Unfortunately, the kendoist in question wasn't yet surfeited of contact with her. Not, at least, while a certain question remained unanswered. "Pray tell, Nabiki Tendo. Do you have more photos of the lovely Akane and the fierce pigtailed girl today?" Surely she must; on such a glorious morning as this, everything was bound to go his way.

"I'm afraid not," Nabiki replied. She had a reasonably large batch of unsold photos of the late, extremely-lamented Ranma-chan back home, but since they were the last ones (at least unless Junko's idea proved workable), they would have to be hoarded, parceled out carefully and slowly for maximum profit. Tatewaki was just going to have to wait a few days, until his passions should rise to the point when he'd be eager to pay whatever price she asked. In the interest of putting him off for now, and laying what might prove to be necessary groundwork for the future, she asked, "I was wondering, Kuno-baby. Don't you ever feel guilty about chasing them both at the same time? It's not like you can give all of yourself to Akane AND all of yourself to the pigtailed girl too. Won't you just end up disappointing them both?"

"Bah. What does a mercenary wench such as yourself know of it? Love is a many-splendored thing. Truly the immortal bard spoke wisely when he said, 'From women's eyes this doctrine I derive: They sparkle still the right Promethean fire; They are the books, the arts, the academes, That show, contain, and nourish all the world.' " Kuno heaved a sigh, staring away into the distance with sparkling eyes. Then, returning his attention to the present, he continued, "He said 'women's', Nabiki Tendo, not 'woman's'."

Nabiki snorted, remembering another, perhaps more appropriate line from that play. _'He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument.'_

-----------------------

"Hmm-hmmmm-hmm-hmmm-hm..." Shampoo hummed absently to herself as she zipped along the fence, the treads of her bike tires balanced securely despite the scant centimeters of purchase available. Before her, four empty delivery boxes nestled snugly between the handlebars. For an instant, Shampoo glanced down at them, favoring the containers with a strange inscrutable look. Then, her eyes snapping up and focusing once more on the terrain ahead of her, the Amazon leaned forward and began pumping harder at the pedals.

She was coming to the end of the long straight stretch of fence; a little ways down the road it angled upward, as the lane itself rose in an arc over the Nerima canal. Shampoo's increased speed as she hit the impromptu ramp sent her flying, riding her bicycle ever higher until she touched down in a perfect two-point landing on the rooftop of someone's house. She poured on the speed once more as she landed, zooming across the roof and soaring high into the air again at its far edge, Amazon muscle and skill and will somehow substituting for an actual ramp. This time she wasn't aiming to land on a higher level than before, which meant she could spare enough attention to look around below her at the height of her arc.

The streets beneath her weren't exactly choked with passersby, but there were enough pedestrians to make her current path far more efficient than riding at ground level would have been. Even as Shampoo peered down at them, she saw many of them staring back at her. A few did so in shock and awe, gaping at the realization that the stories they'd heard and dismissed as urban legends were true after all. By far the larger majority, however, were those who had been around long enough to see previous examples of Chinese Amazon superiority. These, nearly all males, stared up at her in pure unbridled admiration. Their opinions were gratifying, the lavender-haired girl thought as she touched down on another roof, even though she'd rather dismantle and eat her own bike than give herself to such weaklings.

Still, she would have traded every single one of those admiring stares for sight of her beloved Airen. Stupid delivery orders, coming in at just the time the schools let out. She'd actually been heading toward the door of the Cat Café, preparing to leave and intercept Ranma on his way home, when the Matriarch had ordered her to handle this task. Shampoo heaved a sigh of irritation at the memory, absentmindedly leaning to the side and twisting in such a way as to perform an eye-popping ninety-degree turn from her current position in midair. The move prompted more than a few gasps of awe from her street-level audience, along with the near-universal delusion that she'd performed that impossible feat just to show off for them.

_'Why Great-Grandmother do this anyway,' _Shampoo wondered, mindful of the Matriarch's admonition to think in Japanese no matter how much easier Mandarin was. _'Stupid restaurant is only excuse for be here. Why she make Shampoo work so hard there so many time? Be better to use time to train, learn new things, show Ranma who is best match for him.'_ Not to mention that it would be satisfying indeed to spar with him on an equal basis. Shampoo knew she wasn't there yet, and how was she ever to close the gap without serious training from someone better? But whenever she broached the subject with Cologne, she never seemed to get the response she wanted. If she asked about specific techniques, the Matriarch would just say something to the effect of "All in good time," and let the subject drop; if she made a more general request, she ended up getting saddled with extra chores. Sometimes she wondered what kind of effect it would have if she were to go to Genma Saotome and ask him for a little high-level training.

Each time that thought crossed her mind, she inevitably came to the same conclusion. _'Shampoo brave, but not foolhardy.'_ If it was just a question of enduring the kind of training that had made her husband the warrior he was, she probably would have gone for it. Not that she thought Genma could be trusted so easily; the sneaky old panda would probably love to hit her with stuff he _said_ was training, but which were really just attempts to get her to drop out of the race for his son. Having Ranma right there with her would have been enough to prevent such a cheap trick, though, or at least to keep it from going too far. No, the true fatal flaw to this plan would be Cologne's likely reaction to her youngest descendent abandoning her tutelage for that of Genma 'Cat Fist' Saotome.

Shampoo was shaken out of these grim musings by a sudden shudder running through her bike, coupled with a loss of velocity and a drastically altered weight distribution. Only an instant later, she realized the source of the sensations. Against all odds and common sense, some fool had just dropped out of the sky and landed behind her on the vehicle! What's more, he had done it at the very height of her own jump, at the moment when she was most vulnerable! Wasting no further time, Shampoo kicked free of the bike, turning in midair and bringing out one bonbori in a defensive posture, a snarl on her face for whoever would dare attack her this way.

Then, as the sight of Ranma's bemused face registered, she slapped her forehead with her free hand. _'Stupid, not supposed to be jumpy as a cat no more.'_

As if still suffering the lingering aftereffects of her old curse, the Amazon deftly twisted once again in midair, touching down lightly and easily on a rooftop. Ranma wasn't so lucky. Shampoo wasn't certain, but she thought it looked like her bike itself grabbed his pants leg and wove it into the chain at the moment of truth. In any case, as he tried to make his own jump to safety, the bike came along for the ride, its own inertia and imbalance spoiling his attempt completely. The Amazon winced as boy, bicycle, and boxes crashed down to the rooftop one building away from her.

Returning her weapon to storage, she dashed over to Ranma's side. "Ranma? Is you okay?"

"Aw, geez," Ranma muttered, shaking his head and not really paying attention to her yet, "ain't that just my luck. I thought for sure this way I wouldn't get creamed by the stupid bike."

"Hmmph!" Shampoo retorted, satisfied now from her initial quick survey that neither he nor the machine were seriously hurt. "Is nobody fault but Ranma's own. Is bad idea to sneak up on womans of Amazon tribe."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever." Ranma got to his feet, shot the vehicle one last disparaging glance, then brushed himself off. "So how's it going, Shampoo?"

"Is good day, Airen," she said, smiling now. "You come looking for Shampoo, yes?" Her tone made it clear even to Ranma that those two statements were not in any way unrelated.

"Uh, yeah," he answered, modifying what he'd intended to start out with. He'd been planning to tell her just how right she'd been, that he really did like his new form as much as she had indicated he would. On the other hand, now that Shampoo was actually there before him, looking into his eyes and smiling softly, that felt like it might be a little too dangerous.

Before Ranma could decide how to proceed, Shampoo took the decision out of his hands. "Ranma try out new body already, yes? Got to see what is like to fly?"

"Yeah," Ranma confirmed, and despite himself his voice softened and his own smile appeared at the memories. "I understand what you meant, about it being hard to describe. Trying to tell Akane an' everybody back home," he wasn't paying nearly enough attention to see Shampoo's smile dim, "man, I know I didn't do justice to it. Flying so high, so free, getting up above and away from everything..."

"Am glad you like gift Shampoo go through so much to get for you," the Amazon replied, with what she honestly thought was a reasonable measure of subtlety. "Is piece of not-so-good news Shampoo have to tell you too, though."

"What's that?" Ranma asked warily.

"Is Mousse. Like Shampoo tell you yesterday, we no let him know what we go to China for. Not want him get in way, for sure not want him keep Shampoo from give this gift to you. But is not like secret could keep forever. Sooner or later he bound to find out. So Shampoo go ahead and tell him last night."

"Let me get this straight. You showed him your new curse, an' told him that I'd accepted the same thing to get rid of my girl side." Shampoo nodded, and Ranma sighed. "Knowing Mousse, that means one of two things. And since you said this was 'not-so-good' news, I take it he didn't run out of the restaurant on a straight line for the Spring of Drowned Falcon himself."

She nodded again. "Yes, Ranma. Expect new mix of temper tantrum and murder attempt disguise as challenge sometime soon."

"Great. Stupid duck-boy," Ranma grumbled. "Hey, you think you could do me a favor, Shampoo? I know you got no chance at all of keeping him from attacking, but could ya get him to agree not to do it when I'm at home? Akane's been all weird and quiet ever since I told her about this, like she's trying to get used to it or something, and gettin' her house torn up is only gonna–" splash "Hey!"

The transformed martial artist struggled free of his shirt, poking his head out just in time to see Shampoo dump the remainder of her flask of water on herself. Apparently the Amazon knew some trick he didn't, for despite the fact that she'd been dressed similarly to him in a pants-and-shirt combo, she didn't get tangled at all, slipping instead with effortless ease out of the neck of her blouse.

He'd been this close to Shampoo the previous evening when both were in their cursed forms, and the size difference had been noticeable then, but now, with her swelling in obvious anger, it seemed to Ranma's panicked eyes as if she'd grown to nearly double his height. _'Oh boy. What the heck did I say? Why's she this mad?'_ he spared one instant to wonder. Then he pushed the thoughts aside for later. Under normal circumstances, fighting Shampoo wouldn't be any big deal, but with the kind of advantages she'd just given herself, it was a mistake he had no intention of making. Ranma took a deep breath, and began subtly tensing his muscles, waiting for Shampoo to drive forward and commit herself to an attack. _'Saotome Anything Goes Final Attack Revised For New Cursed Form...'_

The final two words 'Fly Away!' never came. Shampoo hadn't been thinking of either the mass disparity or her greater familiarity with falcon form; she'd had a very different reason for dousing the both of them. And now, taking a deep breath, she unleashed the full fury of her true, intended attack.

-----------------------

"What is that ungodly screeching?" Toshi wondered aloud.

"It sounds like it's coming from outside," his girlfriend Ayemi replied. She moved to the window and peered out. "Oh, wow! Come look!"

Dutifully he did so, despite feeling a very real preference to put more distance and a pair of earplugs between himself and the harsh, raucous sound. He moved up beside Ayemi and stared in the direction she indicated. "A couple of birds fighting?" he said. Then, watching for another few seconds, he amended, "Nah, that big one's just yelling at the little one. Heh. Looks like a henpecked husband or something."

"Those are peregrine falcons!" Ayemi declared. "I did a report on them last year. They're called 'peregrine' for the Latin for 'traveler', because in one year they can migrate all the way from up in the Northern Hemisphere to down in the Southern and back. They nearly went extinct because of pesticides, and they're just now starting to make a comeback after some serious work by wildlife preservation agents." She frowned, trying to recall the research she'd done. "But I didn't think they were native to Japan."

"Well, they wouldn't be in a city anyway, would they? Maybe that's somebody's pets."

"Shows how much you know," Ayemi retorted, giving her boyfriend a good old-fashioned red-eye. "They nest in cliffs and their main diet is other birds. With all the tall buildings and sparrows and pigeons and whatever, cities are a great place for them to live. It happens a lot in America. But I sure didn't think we'd ever see any migrate here."

"Maybe those agents did a really, really good job," he offered. "So, is the big one trying to scare the smaller one away from its territory or something?"

"I don't think that's how it works," she said dubiously. "I'm pretty sure that's a male and a female. The girls are the big, strong ones in the falcon world. I don't have a clue why she's carrying on like that."

-----------------------

"...And if I want to hear you talk about stupid spoiled delusional abusive brat Akane Tendo, I'll damn well ASK about her!!" Shampoo finally wound to a halt, closed her eyes, took several long deep breaths, and refocused her attention on Ranma. The five-minute tirade of blistering ire, unhindered by the usual language barrier, had clearly had an effect. He was standing there in a pose that could only be described as 'shell-shocked', his beak agape, his eyes wide, his feathers ruffled, and his entire body trembling ever so slightly. Shampoo let out one last "HMMMPH!" for good measure, then fluttered off to her bike. Retrieving the thermos which Cologne had modified to be operable by her talons was a little difficult, given the tangled position in which Ranma had left her noble steed, and because of this it took several minutes to work the item free and return to human form.

When she had finished, Ranma was still standing where she'd left him. As far as she could tell he hadn't moved at all, though the change in perspective made it difficult to be certain. He continued unmoving as Shampoo slipped back into her clothing. The shock of his own transformation, as Shampoo took pity on him and dumped a measure of her remaining hot water over his head, at least induced him to blink. A few moments passed, as Ranma's gaze slowly refocused.

"Geez, Shampoo, don't hold back or nothin'," he eventually grumbled. That had been one harrowing experience. "Tell me how you really feel."

"Okay." She was smiling now, a smirk that would have raised the hackles on his back if he weren't still recovering from his shock. The Amazon waited a few more appreciative moments before obeying her beloved husband. "Shampoo really feel happy to see you like this."

The wind chose that exact moment to pick up, gusting rather strongly across Ranma's nude form. With a squawk of renewed surprise, embarrassment, and rue, he made yet another desperate dive for his clothes. "Very funny," he gritted out. "I'm gettin' the feeling you didn't tell me all the reasons you wanted to offer me this wonderful new curse."

"Would Ranma believe Shampoo not even think about these benefit until see with own eyes?"

"Not a chance in the world," he said with a snort.

She stuck her tongue out at him. "Is still true."

"Yeah, whatever."

Silence stretched between them for nearly a moment as Shampoo nervously chewed her lower lip. "Ranma?" she essayed at last. "You not have second thought, right? Shampoo not mean to..." Her voice trailed off as she found herself unable to put words to the rest of her thoughts.

"What?" Ranma asked, blinking in surprise as the last of his blush faded. "Nah, don't be stupid. That ain't what I meant at all." Spotting a chance to get a little of his own back, Ranma added, "Just remember, you only got yourself to blame if Ucchan decides to grab these same kinda opportunities you've been having so much fun with."

_'She try it, she find out what happen if fight Shampoo when I have not leave weapons at home,' _Shampoo brooded. Aloud, she said, "If Ranma not able to take little bit of teasing, that just mean Shampoo need to work on building up resistance. Is principle of training, yes?"

"Ah, that's okay, I'm good," Ranma said, taking a half step back and making warding motions. "Okay, time to change the subject. You've still got plenty of the Falcon water left, right?" Last night his mind had obviously been on other things than just how much of the cask's contents Shampoo had been pouring over him, but he was pretty confident of this conclusion nonetheless. And with something that had occurred to him during school today, he was quite glad of that.

"Is so," Shampoo replied, puzzled at where he was going with this. "Why Ranma ask?"

"It's about somebody who could really use a dose for himself," Ranma replied. "Specifically, Mr. Pork Chop Express. I know he might not show up before the water runs out of real power, but if he does, I'd like to offer it to him too."

"To stupid pig-boy Ryoga?" Shampoo asked. "For sure falcon curse is million time better than pig body. But why Ranma care?"

The pigtailed boy squirmed. He'd known that Shampoo already knew about P-chan's secret identity—he was pretty confident that only Akane and Kasumi were still ignorant—but she apparently didn't know just how Ryoga had acquired his curse. He really hadn't wanted to get into these details. "Um... I kinda... knocked him into the spring."

"Shampoo know that," the Amazon replied with a shrug. "Get whole story from Great-Grandmother, after she get it from him during Bakkusai Tenketsu training."

"Huh? Well, if you know that, then why'd you ask me why I wanted to fix things up for him?!"

"Will answer question with question. How it any different from stupid Mousse? Both them go to Jusenkyo of own free will. You not drag them there."

"Yeah, but that don't change the fact that I did knock Ryoga into the spring on my own." _'Well, Pop was involved too, but it ain't like he'd ever take any of the responsibility. I'm not gonna be like that.'_ "That's why."

"Ranma, is something you need to know about Jusenkyo," Shampoo replied. "Anyone what not have protection and get too close will get curse. Pools draw you in, is sneaky magic but very powerful. People in service to Jusenkyo not affected, but for anyone else only ones what very strong, like Great-Grandmother or old pervert Happosai, not get caught. If Ryoga close enough to Jusenkyo to get knock in pool, he was certain to get curse. Only thing is maybe you fault is just what curse he get."

"Huh." Ranma sat in silence, considering the implications for awhile. "Well, that does kinda take some guilt off me, I guess. Thanks for telling me. But it don't change the fact that Ryoga still turns into a cute, helpless little bundle of bacon. Ain't nobody else with a curse anywhere near that bad. That's reason enough to splash him." He paused, subjecting Shampoo to a close look. She was looking away and biting her lip. "Is something wrong?"

"Airen..." she replied slowly, "Shampoo bring that water back for you. Was gift for you because Shampoo had know just how great it was to fly. Want to share that with you, something special for just we two." She stared at him with intensity great enough to cause Ranma to gulp. "Spatula girl have child-time memories with you. Stupid Akane have even more stuff, she get to see you all the time, most everybody is telling you to go to her, and she one what care the least for you! Shampoo just wanted to share one special thing, just us two."

She fell silent then, staring forward at him. Her Airen seemed lost for words. Shampoo could see him visibly struggling to process this, to figure out some way to respond. As for herself, she felt a curious glimmer of relief. Sometimes Shampoo wondered just how effective her hugs and caresses really were in getting through to him. They were certainly enjoyable for her, but her efforts never seemed to bear any long-term fruit. But this time, she could see that her words had really had an impact.

More than a minute passed before Ranma could find a response. "O- okay," he said, in a voice that sounded none too sure of itself. "I guess I understand. But this is important too, Shampoo. Gettin' rid of Ryoga's pig body means a lot to me, personally, because that jerk is using my honor against me with it."

Shampoo blinked. "Huh? What you mean?"

"Well... this... you know he goes around pretendin' to be Akane's pet pig. Right? And that dumb chick is too dense to catch on, even though I've busted my butt giving her clues," Ranma growled. "I can't tell her the truth. I can't tell _anybody_ who don't already know, because lettin' people know about a weakness like that goes against everything I've ever believed in. And bacon boy uses that to crawl into Akane's bed and hide behind her and get me in even more trouble... It needs to stop!" he snarled. "You wanna share something special with me, Shampoo? Then fix _that_ for me! You give me a gift like that, an' I'll be grateful for the rest of my life!"

For a long silent moment the Amazon just looked at him, pain clearly evident in her eyes. "Shampoo?" he asked at last, his earlier forcefulness deserting him. "I don't wanna sound ungrateful, it's just that–"

She cut him off with an upraised hand. "That not problem, Airen," she said quietly. "Shampoo understand now. I just sorry I not see before." She knew how important and how prickly her beloved's sense of duty was—witness the abuse he put up with from Akane, simply because his stupid father had involved his honor there. No, Shampoo didn't need anyone to tell her how much Ranma would suffer for what he thought was right, but that didn't mean she particularly liked it when she had to watch some of that suffering. How long had stupid honorless Ryoga tormented her Airen like this? Far too long, and no longer. "Shampoo happy to do this for you."

-----------------------

The noonday sun shone down on Nerima, bathing its streets in a bright glow. It was Saturday, and the half-day of class had ended not thirty minutes ago. By now most students, released from another day's imprisonment, had scattered to the four corners of the ward, heading either for home or some other relaxing destination.

Ranma Saotome wasn't quite as relaxed as he would have liked. Once again he focused his gaze on his companion—or rather, his companion's back. Akane walked nearly ten paces ahead of him, with no indication that she even knew he was there. She'd been quiet like this ever since the night before last, when he revealed his new curse to her. It could be worse, of course; she could be actively getting in his face and yelling at him for daring to do something like this with Shampoo. Still, even though things could have been worse, Ranma was beginning to get tired of the silent treatment.

He sped up, closing most of the gap between the two of them. "Hey, Akane," he said.

"What?" she asked, not turning or slowing her pace.

"Uh..." he hesitated, caught a little off-guard by this reaction. He'd expected more silence, or failing that at least a bit of anger in her response. But if such an emotion lurked in his short-haired fiancée, he'd heard no evidence of it in the monosyllable. "Ah... Where d'you think Miss Hinako got that huge jar of Pocky?"

Akane just shrugged, and kept walking.

"I mean, that's gotta be the best way of dealing with her I've ever seen. It'd be nice to know where I could get one of those things for the next time she starts off on a delinquent hunt."

Akane didn't bother shrugging this time.

"So how do you think you did on that science test?" he persisted.

"Okay."

"Wish I could say the same," Ranma grumbled, although the irritation in his voice was due more to his companion's recalcitrance than his performance on the quiz. "I didn't get nearly as much studying done these past couple of days as I prob'ly should've. Of course, there was plenty of other new stuff to keep me busy..."

Despite his hopes, this provoked exactly as much of a reaction as all the rest. Akane's pace neither faltered nor quickened. He'd fallen several steps behind her again, which of course prevented him from gauging her expression, but he could see the back of her neck. It wasn't flushed or tense at all. Every indication that he could see said the same thing: she just didn't care.

Ranma glared at her. Ignore him, would she? "So did ya hear about Sayuri gettin' together with the Ghost Cat?"

This, at least, had an effect. Akane stumbled, whirled, and demanded, "W- What?!"

"Oh, so you're interested in one friend at least. That's good to know," he retorted. "Yeah, Akane, it happened day before yesterday. I was walkin' around thinking about what Shampoo had offered me, and I was in just the right place at the right time for Yuka to find me and get me to come save Sayuri's butt. That stupid Miao Moulin had snagged her with a magic necklace that made her get all lovey-dovey with him. If I hadn't'a been there, she'd have been the first girl in our class to get herself hitched."

"That... that's... I... you did, Ranma?" Akane stammered.

_'Success!'_ "Yep. It had to have been pretty stressful for her and Yuka. That's probably why they've been absent these last coupla days."

Akane bit her lower lip in sudden dismay. She hadn't even noticed those absences.

"Just goes to show how weird this place really is," Ranma continued. "How fast things can change and how ya have to be ready to deal with it."

"Is that right," Akane said neutrally.

"Yep." He had been meaning to use that as a turning point for the conversation, bringing it from the past to the present, but at that point something occurred to Ranma. Something that really needed to be said first. "Listen, Akane, even though I kicked his furry butt and smashed the stupid necklace, he might still decide to try it again. The thing was made out of a bunch of those little bells, but it wasn't nearly as many as we saw he had with him that one time. He might be able to make another five necklaces for all I know. So if you see him with one, don't let him get near you with it, and if he dumps it on someone else get it off her and smash it. Otherwise..." He paused to fight off a fit of the shudders.

"Yeah, 'otherwise' wouldn't be good," the youngest Tendo agreed.

"Of course not! Who in their right mind would want to marry a cat? Brrrrrr!" Ranma said.

He would've done better to have left that last sentence unspoken, or at least reworded it. Akane's expression, which had largely opened up during the course of the conversation, slammed closed once more. Her mouth thinned into a short, curt line. She turned, and began walking away once more.

She'd taken all of three steps when the chain whirled around her, tightened, and jerked her airborne.

The shock was enough to break her mood once again. Akane let out a startled, choking scream as she flew through the air, helpless to control or even stabilize her flight. She turned two midair somersaults before landing on a rooftop. The youngest Tendo barely managed to keep her footing, staggering after the landing but not falling. An impressive feat considering the chain had bound both arms quite firmly to her sides.

"AKANE!" Ranma was unable to leap to her aid; he was too busy retreating from the sudden hail of chains, blades, and explosive eggs. The volley forced him back nearly half a block before it came to an end. He stared up in the direction from which the missiles had come, finding his attacker without any difficulty or surprise.

Mousse stood on a rooftop two buildings away from Akane's landing point, perched in the perfect position to be dramatically backlit by the setting sun. However, as the current hour was only a little past noon, all that potential drama was utterly wasted. He was garbed in a much heavier robe than usual, and his face and hair were covered by an oversized wrap-around Oni mask. Still, there was no doubt as to the figure's true identity. If nothing else, the glare he was currently leveling at a fire hydrant five steps away from Ranma made that perfectly clear.

"What do you think you're doing to her, Mousse?!" Ranma snarled. He didn't care how mad the half-blind boy was over Shampoo's actions and preference, Mousse had no right to involve an innocent bystander! "This ain't about Akane, it's about me and Shampoo! You leave her out of this!!"

"What do you think I just _did_, you... you homewrecker! HYAAAH!" Mousse tensed, then exploded forward and upward into a spectacular leap. At the height of his jump, he flung his arms open wide, causing dozens of small lines to shoot out of his sleeves. Ranma tensed, but didn't move yet; none of the attacks had been angled toward him, and none of them were even close enough to be a miss due to Mousse's nearsightedness. What was his opponent up to?

The answer came all too quickly. As Mousse began to drop, he brought his arms back to his chest in a quick, forceful sweep. The lines that still protruded from his sleeves were tugged as well... as were the other lines, previously concealed atop the surrounding buildings, to which they'd attached themselves. Still falling through the air, Mousse somehow found the purchase to spin in five complete circles, which drew the lines above him spiraling tight into one complete, coherent web.

Ranma spared an instant to study the trap. Mousse had now released the strands that were in his sleeves, leaving them to dangle uselessly from the web overhead. Said web was formed of a lattice of lines of uneven sizes; the majority were thin, made of metal, and were very tightly-packed, having only about enough space between them for a cricket to pass. They were interspersed with occasional rubber lines of about ten times the thickness of the metal threads. Wherever those thicker lines intersected with each other they widened into large bulbous bulges. It almost looked like two webs combined into one, and as far as Ranma could see its bottom edge lay flush everywhere against rooftops, side walls, and the street itself. At least for the moment, he was trapped in here with his opponent. On the other hand, a single Moko Takabisha would likely take care of that little annoyance, so Ranma wasn't too worried yet.

"Now do you see, Saotome?" Mousse gloated as he touched down on the street about half a block away. "I was making sure Akane Tendo _didn't _get caught in our crossfire. Unlike some people, I have enough honor not to put an innocent in danger!"

"Unlike who, exactly?" Ranma drawled, taking the steps necessary to bring him next to the fire hydrant. "Your evil twin?!" A quick axe kick knocked one plug off the hydrant, sending its water shooting forth to smash into Mousse.

The half-blind boy let out a shrill yelp as the water blasted him. The unusual thickness of his robes showed its utility here, as Mousse was able to roll out of the stream without having gotten wet enough to change. "Damn you, Ranma! Take THIS!!" With that Mousse hurled one last line into the net above him, one with a hook on the end which snagged the topmost rubber pocket. Mousse ripped back on the cord, dragging the piece of his trap out of its alignment.

With no further ado, every remaining bulbous protrusion released its payload of cold water.

From her position two roofs away, Akane gasped as the plan suddenly became clear. Ranma's earlier failed gambit with the hydrant had proved Mousse's current outfit was protective enough to keep his own Jusenkyo curse from activating. But Ranma had no such protection, and the net had no gap even a tenth of the size needed for Ranma's falcon form to slip out. "Oh no! RAN—huh?!"

"Ha ha ha! Vengeance is mine, Saoto—what the HELL?!" Mousse's jaw dropped in utter disbelief and dismay. The last of the water in the trap was exhausted and the misty spray had cleared enough to make one thing brutally obvious: Ranma's form was completely drenched, and just as completely unchanged.

"Heh. Shampoo warned me yesterday to be expecting something like this," Ranma said with a smirk. "So I took advantage of the waterproof soap she gave me. You know, just in case some dishonorable jerk tried to use my curse against me."

"Th- that's cheating!" Mousse screamed.

"Bite me, bird-brain." Deciding enough time had been wasted, Ranma took the offensive, dashing forward and landing a punishing series of blows. Mousse had intended to shed his cumbersome waterproof outer robes once his foe was transformed into a less dangerous form, but the opportunity to do so was well and truly past now. With that handicapping the half-blind boy, Ranma finished the fight quickly and easily.

He gave his downed foe one last disparaging glance, then borrowed a sword Mousse hadn't managed to draw all the way. With that he cut his way out of the web and jumped up to the rooftop to free Akane from her bonds.

The chains were there. She wasn't.

Ranma stood blinking for awhile. It wasn't inconceivable that she could manage to free herself, and this roof was only one story; she could usually handle a jump down from that height. He knew for a fact that she wasn't comfortable with it, though. Why hadn't she waited for him to come up and help her down?

"AKANE? HEY, AKANE!" he yelled as loud as he could. No response. Ranma bounced to another, higher rooftop. From that vantage point he spotted Akane, several blocks away and walking steadily toward home.

He stared at the sight for a good solid minute. At last, his own expression hardening, Ranma turned away and headed for a particular abandoned bathhouse. Judging from the occasion when Ryoga had gotten his hands on a bar of waterproof soap, it might take awhile to wash off his protection, but it shouldn't be too difficult. And he'd already skipped flying the previous night, since he'd wanted to be ready for Mousse's inevitable attack. This seemed like a good chance to make up for lost time.

_'Stupid Akane. If she can't even wait a couple minutes for me, let's try a few hours.'_

-----------------------

By the time the front door was fully closed behind her, Nabiki sensed trouble brewing. She was nowhere near as attuned to the household wa as was Kasumi, but when the harmony was this badly damaged even she could tell. The middle Tendo paused in the entryway, allowing herself one moment of unbridled frustration. This was no time for things to be sinking down into worse depths, Nabiki thought to herself. She was still trying to come to terms with the changes that had already taken place, to recover her balance and find the calm clarity she needed to get things moving her way again. And now, unless she seriously missed her guess, something new and unpleasant had happened, causing Akane to radiate displeasure strongly enough to infuse the whole house.

Whatever it was, Nabiki knew a certain sister's pigtailed fiancé had to be at the heart of it. _'Maybe I ought to splash him and keep him in a birdcage for the next few days,'_ she thought grimly. That would undoubtedly shake things up, though it would certainly be a risky prospect. If nothing else it would certainly damage Ranma's willingness to cooperate in the future, at least in the short term. _'On the other hand, doing something like that would also mess up everyone else's plans. If it turns out that whatever has Akane's panties in a twist was Shampoo working out the next item on her agenda, maybe it would be worth it to screw the rest of her timing up.'_

Despite all this, Nabiki wasn't really considering the idea all that seriously. The thought was more valuable as stress relief than as an actual prospective plan. After spending a few more seconds envisioning Ranma the Unstoppable Force of Nature cooped up in a cage until she deigned to release him, Nabiki felt ready to head farther into the house and find out just what was causing her 'bad development' radar to go crazy.

As she approached the living room, the sound of the television reached her ears. _'That'll be Akane then. Kasumi almost never takes time for something like that. Not that I suppose little sister is paying all that much attention to the tube.'_ She paused again on the threshold, taking a deep breath, then headed into the room. Sure enough, Akane was there, kneeling on a cushion and ostensibly watching the TV. Sure enough, her eyes weren't focused on the screen, and her closed, wounded, defensive posture made it brutally clear how she was really feeling.

With no further hesitation, Nabiki switched off the set and plopped down next to Akane. "So... do you want to talk about it?" she asked without preamble.

Evidently at least a little preamble would have served her better. The powering down of the television and the query from her sister were enough to start her back toward focusing on the present, but several seconds passed before her gaze settled on Nabiki. "Did you say something, big sister?" Akane asked tentatively.

Nabiki heard the hidden tremor at the back of her sister's words and gave another mental frown. This really wasn't good. No matter what Ranma had done, Akane ought to be responding with at least a little temper. While a response like that was painful for Ranma, it wasn't anything too troublesome compared to how he'd grown up. Thanks to the job 'Uncle Saotome' had done raising his only child, Akane's anger and violence were nowhere near as repugnant to him as they'd be to a normal guy. In fact, on some level Ranma had to have an easier time dealing with the fights than he did with Shampoo's and Ukyo's more open, honest affection.

As long as Ranma didn't start catching up on the lessons he'd missed earlier in life, Nabiki knew the frequent fights between him and Akane weren't that likely to have a lasting negative impact. But she also knew that under the right circumstances Ranma could learn lessons dangerously swiftly and thoroughly. And the most common such circumstance was when things changed dramatically enough to force him to change as well.

This was no time for Akane to walk away from her old, successful pattern. No matter what had happened to make little sister this cold and withdrawn, Nabiki needed to nudge her back to a response Ranma would know how to handle.

But before she could do that, she needed information. "Hey, sis, you look a little down. Did Ranma pull something stupid again today?"

Akane shook her head, the motion ending with her face turned well away from her sister.

Nabiki declined to take the hint. "Really? He didn't? That's kind of hard to believe. I've never seen you this depressed when it wasn't his fault."

"Of course it's his fault," Akane's voice rasped. "But it's not like I can blame him, right? I mean, who wouldn't have said yes? Why shouldn't he take the waterproof soap when Shampoo offered it to him? She probably didn't even ask anything in return that he didn't already want to give..."

"Waterproof soap?!" Nabiki forced herself back to a state of reasonable composure. "I thought that stuff didn't really work."

Akane shrugged. "Worked well enough... well enough for him to just laugh it off when Mousse attacked and splashed him... told him Sh- Shampoo had warned him to expect this, and gave him w- what he needed to be prepared..."

"And this happened on the way home from school?" Nabiki guessed, her mind shifting into overdrive. "Where's Ranma now?"

"Who knows... probably off with Shampoo, showing his appreciation..." Akane screwed her eyes shut, then opened them and got to her feet. "I'm going to my room."

_'She can say all that, and not be angry? Just miserable? Oh, Akane,'_ Nabiki thought. _'Damn you, Saotome. I won't let this happen.'_ Standing as well, she said, "Sis, wait. Please don't go."

"N- Nabiki, I really don't want to t- talk any, anymore..."

"Really?" Nabiki asked, her voice sharpening and hardening. "You're just going to walk away and cry? Let her stroll off with everything she ever wanted? I'm ashamed of you, Akane. I never thought I'd see the day when my own sister rolled over and played dead for someone like Shampoo!"

"H- hey!" Despite the sudden hostility in Akane's reply, it was music to Nabiki's ears. _That_ was the Akane she knew, the one who would bull ahead and fight for what she wanted, even if she couldn't admit to herself or anyone that she wanted it. Far better to trigger Akane's temper and let that wash away the despair that had been there earlier.

"What?" Nabiki replied in a tone that was just condescending enough. "Didn't like hearing the truth? Did I touch a nerve, little sister? Sorry for pointing out that you're doing just what Shampoo wants. You wouldn't give her a better present if you KO'd Ranma, wrapped him up and tied a bow on him, and left him in Shampoo's bed at the Cat Cafe."

"Nabiki, I sure didn't want to hear _that_!" Akane yelled, her fists balling at her sides.

"No? Why not? You're doing an excellent job of pushing things right straight toward something like that. You couldn't do it any more efficiently if Shampoo had got you to work with her for real." Nabiki arched one eyebrow. "Hey, is that it? Did she promise to teach you how to cook ramen and wear a skimpy little dress without getting embarrassed? Seems like a small price to sell Ranma out for, especially to someone like her. Or maybe you've forgotten Shampoo pushing those love pills into his mouth, or tying him to her with the Red Thread of Fate, or feeding him those mind-control mushrooms, or–"

"Enough! Okay?!" Akane shouted, loud enough to be heard three houses down. "It's not like that, Nabiki!"

"It's not? Does that mean you're _not _going to just lie back and watch her snare him for herself?" Nabiki asked. The question was really more rhetorical than anything else. Akane's anger had completely displaced her earlier apathy and pain. It was clear to the middle Tendo that her sibling had recovered her fighting spirit.

"Darn right I'm not!" Akane confirmed. "As soon as that jerk gets back here, he's going to get what's coming to him!"

"Good to hear. Just a word of advice, though, little sister. By all means punish him for making such an inconsiderate idiot of himself, but smacking him around isn't the answer. You need to remind him of what I just told you, refresh his memory as to just how far Shampoo can be trusted. Really get it through his thick skull how big of an idiot he'd have to be to give up his freedom and dignity for a bar of soap and a curse."

Akane nodded sharply. "Don't worry, Nabiki. When I get through with him, he'll know better than to go flying back to Shampoo."

-----------------------

The light of the setting sun glowed crimson on his feathers as Ranma swooped down for a landing. 'A few hours' had stretched much longer than he'd planned. It hadn't taken long at all to wash away the remaining protection of the soap, and ever since then he'd been enjoying himself blazing trails across the sky. He'd ridden the winds to incredible heights, rising until it seemed he could take in all of Japan with one glance. He'd stretched himself to speeds nearly unimaginable, screaming across the sky like a missile, puncturing clouds and scaring seagulls with equal enjoyment. He'd put his new body through all sorts of tests, diving deeply into things he'd only been able to fleetingly touch during his maiden flight. About the only thing he'd thought of but hadn't done was catch some unlucky smaller bird and make up for his missed lunch.

When that idea had started to seem dangerously attractive, Ranma knew it was time to head for home and the dinner table. His clothes were still waiting in the bathhouse, but he decided to leave them there for the night. Kasumi had set up a hot water dispenser in the dojo the previous day, but he hadn't been able to test it out yet in his cursed form. Keeping himself protected from Mousse's inevitable impending attack had been far higher on the list of priorities.

Yielding to the desire for one last bit of aerial whimsy, he turned a triple barrel roll as he entered Tendo airspace, coming out of the last roll just in time to swoop down through the doorway of the dojo. He could almost feel the hot water cascading over him, could nearly taste the food waiting for him. _'Good thing Pop ain't around to try and steal any from me tonight. The old man might lose a hand.'_

With a snap and rustle of wind over feathers, he zipped through the door and angled his flight toward the far side of the dojo, where the hot water dispenser was situated in one corner and a spare change of clothing was stashed under the floorboards. His attention was quickly diverted from that goal, however. _'Uh-oh. Akane's here. Ain't it just my luck that she's practicing with those dumbbells instead of smashing bricks.'_ He'd have heard the latter and known to go elsewhere to change back.

"Ranma!" She'd seen him almost as quickly as he'd spotted her. Akane halted with one twenty-pound weight still held aloft, and favored him with a stormy scowl. At least, that was the impression Ranma got in the second he had for observation. His flight took him past her too quickly for any long, in-depth study.

Banking right, he swerved into a turn that brought him around in line for the door. "Oh, no you don't!" came the cry from behind him, followed by the whir of a weightier object's passage through the air. Akane's barbell sped faster than the transformed martial artist, zipping forward and crashing into its desired target. Ranma just had time for an instant of dismay as he saw the missile blast past him and smack against the door, knocking it closed. And then, with an audible thud, the Saotome heir smacked headlong into the unyielding door. He tumbled to the ground with visions of tomboys circling around his skull. Behind him he heard an unmistakably satisfied "Hmmph!" from Akane.

Groaning and shaking his head, Ranma recovered enough to pick himself up off the ground and turn indignantly to face her. "What'd ya do that for?!" he squawked, not really caring that Akane couldn't possibly understand him.

Perhaps she cared, though. Or maybe she just wanted to look him in the eye without straining her neck. In any case, Akane's reply to Ranma's indignant query was the very thing for which he'd come here. Though under the circumstances, the hot water was more of a curse than a blessing.

Ranma's falcon form blurred, shifted, and rose into something rather more impressive. He groaned, still fighting a bit of disorientation from his collision, made worse by the unexpected massive change in perspective.

Meanwhile, the modified kettle slipped from Akane's nerveless fingers. Her jaw dropped, and her face flushed bright red.

As luck would have it, the youngest Tendo was the first to recover the power of motion. "Y- you PERVERT!!" Ranma's head collided with the door again, this time knocked backward by the force of Akane's slap.

"Hey, give it a rest, would ya?!" he demanded a few seconds later, once the ringing in his ears had subsided to tolerable levels. Akane was facing directly away from him now, her back ramrod straight and her hands twitching as if ready to curl around one of the practice swords. Every exposed inch of her skin was flushed a bright red, whether from anger or embarrassment Ranma couldn't tell. "None of this is my fault!"

"Will you put some clothes on already?!" Akane screeched.

"You're kinda staring right at the place where my change of clothes is stored," he retorted. Akane stomped away to the other side of the dojo, keeping her eyes directed at the wall ahead of her and clearing the way for Ranma to retrieve the garments. He hurried over, pulled up the floorboards, grabbed his clothes, and scrambled into them as quickly as he ever had. "Okay, I'm gonna go wash up for dinner now."

"Oh, no you're not!" Akane declared, whirling around to face him. "You're not going anywhere until we talk about this!"

"Talk about what?" Ranma grumbled. "About you blaming me for stuff that's not my fault, and throwin' a hissy fit just because it was Shampoo who did all this for me?"

"About how stupid you're being!" she shot back. "Honestly, Ranma, how many times does something like this have to happen before you start to learn better?"

"Huh?" Ranma blinked at her, trying and failing to make sense of that. "How many times? Something like _what_?" It wasn't like anybody had previously offered him a gift as good as the one he'd so recently received. What kind of lesson did Akane think he needed lo learn, exactly?

Akane gritted her teeth. "How can you be such a big idiot," she said, not making it sound like a question at all. "I'm talking about Shampoo. What's it going to take to get the lesson through to you?"

"Would you care to explain that?" he retorted. "I already said how cool it is to be able to fly. Taking her up on her offer was the right thing to do. Just what are you trying to get at, Akane?"

"Explain?! What I'm trying to do is remind you that she can't be trusted any farther than Nabiki could throw her! Every time she comes up with one of these tricks you leap right into it, make a fool out of yourself and cause a lot of trouble for other people. You wind up getting burned, and for what? It always turns out to be just another stupid attempt to chain you down as Shampoo's tame little pet. Is that what you want, Ranma? Hey, maybe that nice new curse was just one of the gifts she's got for you. Bet there's a bright, shiny birdcage with your name on it waiting at the Cat Café!"

"Yeah, whatever. Guess that's why she gave me three bars of waterproof soap to go along with the Falcon water. Geez, Akane, you don't have any confidence in me at all, do you?"

"Confidence? In _you_?! Oh, I'm confident all right, Ranma. Confident that you'll keep on making the same stupid mistakes you always do, and letting Shampoo, and Ukyo, and Kodachi, and any other girl who wants to walk all over you! You jerk, how do you think _I_ feel when something like this happens?!" Akane spat. "Don't you even care a little about how much you're always embarrassing me and making me look bad? Shampoo goes all the way back to Jusenkyo and all she does is bring back a new curse for you, to match her new one. If it'd been me I'd have gotten water that would have cured you, and Mr. Saotome, and Mousse too! But that stupid selfish bimbo didn't even consider that for a minute, did she? No, she just decided to jerk your leash again, and you go along with it with a smile on your face!"

"Hey, that is not how it is!" Ranma growled back. "My leash? Where the heck do you think you get off talking like that? I'm the one who made this decision, Akane, and I don't appreciate you raggin' on me like I didn't have the right to do what I did! Geez, if there's anyone in my life who tries to control me an' tell me what to do, it ain't Shampoo—it's you."

"H- how _dare_ you say that!" she demanded. "I've rescued you from Shampoo over and over, and you just keep on going back to her!" She blinked tears of anger out of her eyes. "I ought to just let you take the fall this time, you jerk. Didn't have the right to do what you did?! No, you damn well didn't!"

She saw him frown more deeply and open his mouth to respond, and quickly overrode his budding protest. "You didn't even come back and discuss it with any of us, Ranma! You've lived in our house for more than a year now, whatever happens to you affects all the rest of us too, and you don't even care! You just think of yourself, do whatever you want, and don't care who else gets embarrassed or hurt because of it! If you were half as honorable as you like to pretend, you'd have told Shampoo just where she could stick that stupid water!"

Akane ran out of words then. She took a couple of deep, heaving breaths, then focused her gaze on Ranma in as fierce a stare as she could manage.

Silence stretched between the two of them for a timeless moment, as Ranma took his own deep breaths. And then, with a snarl, he shattered it.

"Now you listen to me and you listen good." The words were spoken, not shouted, but they carried enough force to literally knock Akane back a step. "I put up with the usual crap you dump on me without raising any kind of fuss. I let you call me a pervert and I don't say nothing about it anymore cause I've finally figured out you're too clueless to ever see things as they really are." Ranma matched her pace, advancing as she took two more steps backward, stopping again when she halted her own retreat. "Every time I tell you something that's the least little bit hard to believe you call me a liar, and later on when you finally get it thrown in your face that I was tellin' the truth after all, I'm lucky to get more than a couple of quick words for apology. And I can handle that too. You blame me for what Shampoo or Ukyo or Kodachi or Ryoga or Mousse or _anybody_ does, and you keep on doing it time after time, but it ain't like you're the only one who does that. No big deal there either."

Akane flinched as he took one more deliberate step toward her, but declined to give any more ground. Ranma continued speaking, his words and his expression carrying more anger and force than the youngest Tendo had ever seen him direct toward her. "But let me make one thing absolutely crystal clear, Akane. You don't _ever_ try and take my honor away from me or make out like I don't have any. I've put my life on the line for you I don't know how many times. For Shampoo I had to face down the goddamn Ghost Cat on his home turf, and that was even worse! But I did it, faced up to something a hell of a lot worse than anything you've EVER had to deal with. I did all those things for duty an' for honor.

"I fight people who wouldn't think twice about crippling or killing me if they ever managed to beat me. And what do I do? Knock all the fight out of them and that's it. Nothing more, nothing worse, no sinking down to Mousse's or Kuno's level even though it means they're gonna keep coming back time and time again with new honorless backstabbing tricks. Putting up with that is the price I pay for really being an honorable martial artist, when so many people around me are just pretending to be."

Very little at this point could have galvanized Akane to return to the attack, but that last sentence managed the feat. How _dare_ he talk about her that way! How dare that jerk look down on her like everyone else did, just because she never got the training opportunities they had! Honor? If that was what Ranma Saotome thought honor was, then he was long overdue for a wake-up call. And Akane Tendo was just the one to give it to him!

Embracing the anger and using it to push away some of the uncertainty his retort had created in her, Akane yelled back, "Don't make me laugh, Ranma! I know you've got an ego bigger than Mt. Fuji, but if you're going to lie just do it to yourself. Don't make me sit through it too!"

"Dammit, Akane, listen to me—"

"No, _you_ listen! You're no better than anyone else around here, and you're a lot worse than some of them! Where were you when I was trying to fight off a dojo destroyer? On a date with Shampoo... for a curse cure that didn't even work! Whenever she shows up with some new trick, you fall all over her trying to get your hands on it. I suppose in your world that's honorable?!"

"I have never promised anybody _anything_ that I didn't deliver," Ranma grated out, glaring at her all the more fiercely. It was clear to Akane that these new accusations, rather than leaving him properly chastised, were only making him angrier. Even now he was swelling as he drew in more breath, ready to continue his counterattack. An attack she knew in her bones she wouldn't be able to withstand.

Realizing that she only had one chance left to win this argument, Akane unleashed the heaviest weapon in her artillery. "That's a lie and you know it, Ranma! You broke the most important promise you ever made, and you keep on breaking it every time Mrs. Saotome comes by. I'd give _anything_ to be able to be with my mother again, but you–"

"That is IT! You shut the hell up right now and listen to me!" Ranma speared her with the most vicious glare Akane had ever seen. "If you weren't a girl I'd beat the crap out of you for that, Akane. I don't know what's wrong with you, and right now I don't really care.

"You still don't get it, do you? You don't have a clue what really tipped the scales and made me decide to take Shampoo up on her offer. It was Mom, Akane. She's been waiting most of my life for me to come back as a son she could be proud of. How the _HELL_ was she gonna be anything but crushed when little miss curvy redhead shows up on the doorstep and confesses just who she really is? Well?! You got anything to say to that?!"

Ranma paused for a bare handful of instants, perhaps to give her one chance to respond, perhaps just to shore up the walls of his temper. "But that ain't true any more," he continued in tones of quiet steel. "Thanks to Shampoo, I finally got a real chance to put that behind me. Mom might be a little weirded out by me turning into a bird, but it's nowhere near as bad as being a girl. As soon as Pop gets back and can tell me her address, my mother is finally gonna get to meet the son she's been waiting for.

"That was all I needed to see to make the decision. I sure as hell didn't need to come back here begging for advice, tell you Shampoo had offered me something so great and listen to you go nuts. You don't tell me what to do, Akane. Not now, not ever!"

Akane shivered, her eyes falling to the floor as she found herself unable to meet his burning, accusatory stare. "I... I didn't know..."

"That's a load of bull!" Ranma shouted, only made angrier by her statement. "I flat-out TOLD you! Said this the same night I came back with my new curse. I explained every bit of what it meant to me and why I did it. And the only thing you apparently cared enough to listen to was that it was something I got from Shampoo!

"I've put up with your jealousy for a long time. Heck, when Shampoo first got here and I told you she was out to kill me, you just thought it was good for a laugh. But as soon as she started gettin' all affectionate, you went through the damn roof! You may not want to hear this, Akane, but sometimes you're no better than Kodachi—heck, sometimes you're even worse!!"

She'd held out as long as she could, clinging first to righteous anger, then to defiance, then at last to pride. But Ranma's final words shattered the last of that, and with a quavering cry of misery, Akane sank to her knees and began to weep.

The sight cut through Ranma's own anger more quickly than almost anything else could have. A quick surge of panic replaced his previous ire. _'Oh, crap. Now what do I do?!'_ Everything he'd said had been fully justified; furthermore, it was stuff his fiancée really needed to hear. But _this_ wasn't what he'd wanted! He'd had no intention of reducing her to such a state of misery! All Ranma had desired was for Akane to once, just _once_, really listen to him, see things as they truly were, and give him a real apology.

"I'm sorry!" she choked out. "I'm so, so sorry, Ranma..."

"H- hey... okay, that, that's all I wanted to hear... Please, stop crying!" he implored, waving his arms ineffectively. "I didn't mean to be that hard on ya!"

After a few minutes that seemed like an eternity to the panicking pigtailed boy, Akane's sniffles eased and her tears quit flowing. "You okay?" he asked tentatively. Akane nodded, but didn't speak. Ranma let out a long, deep sigh. "Okay. I'm sorry too. I didn't mean to make you so upset," he explained. "I just needed to get through to you how things really are. This curse is the best thing anyone's done for me in I don't know how long. I know it bugs you that it was from Shampoo, but you need to grow up and get over it. Okay?"

"Okay," Akane said quietly. "You're right, Ranma. It's your life and I don't have any right to tell you how to live it."

"Ah... right," Ranma agreed, feeling none too certain about the tone in which she'd spoken that reply. Still, the words were true enough. That was the important thing, wasn't it? "Just so you know, I'm not stupid, Akane. I know part of why Shampoo did this was cause she wanted to get closer to me. It ain't like she's gonna catch me by surprise or nothing. So no more temper tantrums about any of this, okay?"

"Okay," Akane said quietly. "I'm sorry for how mean I've been about this."

"Hey, it ain't like you're the only person who's made mistakes," Ranma replied. "It's just... you gotta start learning from them. Heck, so do I. Let's both work on that, all right?"

"Okay," Akane said quietly. "Tell me if I start to get out of line again."

"Uh, yeah. Sure." Ranma gave her a long dubious look. The conversation was starting to feel a little too weird. "Come on, let's head back to the house. It's gotta be about time for dinner."

"Okay," Akane said quietly.

-----------------------

Every time the sound of whirring bike tires reached Mousse's sensitive ears, his heart rate kicked into a higher tempo. His hands clenched, sweat stood out on his brow, and he slid forward to the edge of his seat. Each time the bicycle passed fruitlessly by the Cat Café, he slumped back down and mumbled a curse on the general popularity of the vehicles. In a perfect world, the sound of an approaching bike should equate to the approach of Shampoo herself.

But then again, in a perfect world he wouldn't be sitting here waiting for her. Perhaps they would be out enjoying the night together, seeing the sights of the town. Or perhaps they'd be spending a quiet evening at home. He wasn't sure where home would be, in a perfect world, except that it would be with Shampoo and far away from Ranma Saotome.

Mousse closed his eyes and focused on that thought, drawing strength from the familiar vision. Someday it would be his. Someday he'd find a way to free Shampoo from the deplorable ties that chained her to that pigtailed vermin, he'd prove his worth to one and all so emphatically that Shampoo would finally be free to express the feelings she'd had deep in her heart all along. Someday, may it come quickly, he would be the one sharing everything with her, instead of just being there when he was allowed to be. Someday when she asked the old ghoul for a day off, it would be so that she could spend time with _him_.

At least Cologne had decided not to bother opening the restaurant today. Mousse supposed he should be thankful for small favors. However, he just was not in a thankful sort of mood—not after seeing his carefully-laid ambush fail so badly, and especially not after having Shampoo vanish in the morning and spend all the day away. He'd only seen her for a minute, just managing to overhear the old mummy grant Shampoo's request for a day of freedom from her usual chores. Whatever reason she'd given for wanting this, he hadn't heard it, and when he asked her she just brushed him off and continued toward the door. The bitterest irony of all was that he could have gone with her had it not been for the trap he'd had to finish setting up, the trap that was foiled by aid Shampoo herself had given to his foe.

"Oh, Shampoo. Why do you torture me like this?" he sighed. "Haven't I done enough to prove my love to you? Can't you fight your way free of that damn Casanova and come to someone who really deserves you? I'll love you with all my heart, forever. I would have given anything for you to decide to share a curse with me. I'd have given all that and _more_ if the reason you gave Saotome this new curse was to make him weaker than he used to be. But then, why did you have to give him the soap too?! Oh, Shampoo, tell me why!"

With a sickening thud, Cologne's staff connected with the back of Mousse's head, and suddenly the pain in his heart wasn't quite so distracting. "Will you please quit your whining, Mr. Part-time?" the Matriarch snapped. "Leave the soliloquies to the playwrights. Shampoo is on her way back now. She'll be here in less than ten minutes. And I swear to you if you get on one more of my nerves between now and then, I'll send you on a shopping trip to the other side of Tokyo, and I'll give you a lift over the first ten miles of it with my staff!"

Mousse rubbed his head and kept silent, though he did fire off a withering glare in what he thought was Cologne's direction. Satisfied that she wouldn't have to endure any more melodramatic self-pity for the moment, the Matriarch headed back upstairs. Mousse spared a couple of moments' thought to wonder what she was up to up there. Probably working out the next phase of the latest scheme to force Shampoo and Ranma together, that would be his guess.

-----------------------

Cologne settled herself back onto the cushion, picked up her copy of Lust in the Dust, and quickly lost herself once more in the tale of passion, betrayal, and general hanky-panky.

-----------------------

_'Far be it from me to interrupt her from something so important,' _Mousse thought bitterly. _'By all means, Elder, let me just sit quietly while you come up with all sorts of new ways to make Shampoo's and my life miserable.'_

With an effort, he pushed those grim thoughts aside. At least Shampoo should be back before too much longer. He wondered whether the old mummy had really sensed her great-granddaughter's approach even from so far away, or if he'd just missed hearing this morning when Shampoo and Cologne agreed on a time for the love of his life to return. Frankly, Mousse hoped it was the latter. He knew he stood no real chance against an Elder in a fight, let alone the Matriarch herself, but it would be nice to think that if worst came to worst he and Shampoo could at least run and hide together.

This segued into another familiar string of thoughts, which were enough to keep him reasonably happy until the front door swung open.

"Great-Grandmother, I home!" Shampoo strode into the Cat Café with a big smile on her face, practically radiating satisfaction and happiness. Even Mousse managed to pick up on a little of it.

"Sh- Shampoo!" He jerked to his feet, causing his chair to wobble precariously as he left it behind. "It's been a really long day without you. I'm glad to see you back now."

"Hmm. Whatever," Shampoo replied, continuing into the room and past him without even slowing down. "Bye-bye, Mousse."

"Wait! Don't go yet. I wanted to talk to you."

"Got no time." Shampoo passed into the kitchen, and then into the alley behind the building where she did most of her formal practicing, Mousse still trailing along behind her. "Shampoo not get to train any yet today. Need to do that now."

"So you didn't do any training while you had the day off? What did you do?" Mousse asked, still trying to strike up a conversation.

"Spent almost all day flying. Not that stupid Mousse should care," the Amazon retorted snippily. She paused at the natural moment of fullest extension in her first warm-up stretch, and gave Mousse a long dubious look. "You not know first thing about what is really like."

"Huh? Wh- what's that supposed to mean? I fly all the time!" Mousse protested.

"Just flap, flap from here to there, nothing else. Mosquito does same! Mousse have duck body all this time and never stop to see how much joy could be there for him." Shampoo's current warm-up exercise had her facing well away from her unwanted suitor. She waited until the routine brought her back within eyesight of him before remarking, "Ranma learn better right away."

"Don't talk to me about that scumbag!" Mousse half-demanded, half-pled. "Why'd you have to do this anyway, Shampoo? Why did you give him the same curse as yours? And why, _why_ did you have to give him waterproof soap too?!"

"Hmmm, let Shampoo think." Having just finished one set of stretches, Shampoo paused before beginning the next, one finger on her chin in a particularly cute pose of contemplation. "Could maybe be because Shampoo love him, want to be with him, want to share good thing with him? And not want stupid no-honor fighters to take advantage of new curse? Mm-hm, that was it."

"I'd give anything for you to do something like that for me," Mousse declared bitterly. "I bet that honorless bastard hasn't even thanked you."

"Wrong. Mousse lose bet. Now please pay stakes by go away and let Shampoo train."

"Maybe I will go," he said. "And maybe you'll miss me when I'm gone."

Shampoo snorted as fiercely as she ever had in her life. "Go inside to own room, or go back to Jusenkyo to copycat curse, or go home to village and never come back. Shampoo not miss you either way." And with that she resolutely turned her eyes away and began her first kata.

Several long moments passed before he did as she'd asked, but Mousse finally scraped together the resolution to turn and trudge back into the restaurant. He paused in the main area for what seemed to him quite a long time, before beginning to move again. It hurt, hearing Shampoo talk like that, but at least this time her real meaning was clearer than usual. He paused once more at the top of the steps, staring up at the blur that was the trapdoor leading to his meager attic loft. "I don't want to leave you for so long, Shampoo," he whispered. "But if that's what you want, I'll... I'll do it. I'll prove myself to you. I'll go back to Jusenkyo and get my own curse to match yours." He grimaced. "And maybe I'll pick up another dose of Nyannichuan for Saotome while I'm at it."

"I don't think so."

At the sound of the unexpected voice behind him, Mousse whirled. "What?!" He brought one hand up to his glasses, adjusting them as he peered forward, trying to locate whoever had spoken.

"Oh, for the love of all humanity! I should think you ought to know my voice by now!" Cologne snapped, glaring up at him. She held her staff in one hand rather than balancing herself atop it, and was currently suppressing with difficulty the desire to reintroduce Mousse to its business end.

The half-blind boy grimaced. "Oh, it's you. Listen, ol—er, Honored Elder, I need to leave for awhile. I'll return as quickly as I can, but it will take a couple of weeks."

"I heard you quite clearly the first time." Cologne's eyes narrowed as she stared at him. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to make a few edits to your travel plan, Mousse."

"What? What are you talking about?"

"By all means return to Jusenkyo and do something about your curse," Cologne replied. "Unlike my great-granddaughter, there's never been anything stopping you from going back there and curing yourself. You knew I would have allowed you to seek out a cure even though you'd broken the law by going to Jusenkyo in the first place. You should have taken advantage of my goodwill a long time ago."

Mousse held back a frown. _'Isn't that just like the old mummy, thinking she's the be-all and end-all. Like her permission mattered to me when leaving would've given that Casanova free reign to move in on my Shampoo. Does she really not realize I'm doing this because it's what Shampoo wants?'_ "Um... what's your point?"

Cologne heaved a weary sigh, then said, "Never mind. I'm not going to waste my time or yours by trying to explain my reasons."

_'Like that's new,' _Mousse grumbled to himself, absently rubbing his arms against a sudden chill. He frowned, as the ominous feeling suddenly got quite a bit stronger. _'Where's this coming from?'_

"Mousse." It was a single word, a single syllable—but it was spoken with import and strength enough to send the boy in question to his knees in automatic obedience. Cologne spared an instant to regard the gratifying response, so much better than Mousse usually managed, then stared directly into his eyes. "I am speaking to you now as the Matriarch of the Chinese Amazons. I've lost count of how many things I've let slide from you here in Japan, but you had better understand that what I say now is set in stone.

"Return to Jusenkyo. Cure your curse. Do not come back here with your own falcon form, or any other alternate body. Return as one untouched by Jusenkyo, or do not come back at all. And discard any idea you had of bringing back cursed water to use on Ranma, or on anyone."

A long, grim silence followed this pronouncement, broken at last by Mousse's harsh whisper. "Very well, Honored Elder."

Cologne turned and shuffled several paces away, then stopped and fired one last salvo over her shoulder. It might not do any ultimate good, but at least this tactic cost her nothing. "Understand me, boy. If you truly were worth Shampoo's consideration, I wouldn't have had to tell you any of this. You'd have seen as much and more for yourself a long time ago."

-----------------------

A gentle breeze blew through the open window, stirring the curtains and carrying the clean scent of morning into the room. Dust motes danced in the sunlight. It was quiet outside, atypically so to a family that had grown accustomed to their houseguests' frenetic morning routine. Every so often, as she had for the last three days, Akane caught herself straining to hear the sounds of a practice that would seem as much grudge match as sparring routine.

The stillness continued, broken only by far more normal sounds. As if bored by the calm, Akane's attention shifted from hearing to sight. There was a patch of sunlight sharing the bed with her, she noted distantly. When had that happened? Had she really sat here so long? The last time she'd looked, the light's leading edge had still been on the floor several inches away from her bed. Had all that time really passed, and nothing to show for it?

The youngest Tendo pulled her thoughts away from these distractions. She needed to find some sort of outlet for the deeper, darker concerns that were weighing her down. Letting her mind wander around the room, around the issue, wasn't helping at all. With a scowl of determination, she looked down once more on the blank, empty pages of her diary, lying open before her on her lap.

The sunlight crept across another inch of her comforter. The pages remained empty.

"Why can't I find the right words?" Akane whispered at last, the pen she'd held so long slipping unnoticed through her fingers. "I can't just keep this bottled up in me. I have to get it out!" She paused, noticed the pen lying on the comforter beside her, grabbed it again and brought it back to the stubborn, empty page. Again she froze, wanting to express her feelings, needing to get at least some of this out of her, but completely unable to transfer her thoughts to the paper.

At last Akane let both diary and pen drop. "I wish P-chan was here. It's easier to talk about some stuff than write it down." And it was better to have someone to talk to, rather than just speaking to the air or herself. Nevertheless, her pet wasn't here, and her diary had proved completely uncooperative, and beggars couldn't be choosers. Akane took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and began speaking softly.

"What was it Ranma said last night? Oh, yeah. 'I've put my life on the line for you I don't know how many times.' Like I didn't already know that. I still have dreams about some of them. Kirin..." Akane's eyes, already closed, clenched tighter. She shuddered. "I remember, Ranma. I remember when you got to the top of that tower, how you were roughed up, bruised, even a little bloody. But it didn't stop you, you just charged on in and fought him, harder and fiercer than ever. I remember how you used the Hiryu Shoten Ha to win. And it wasn't even that you defeated him, it was just that when the tornado came Kirin only cared about saving the scroll, and you rescued me."

Akane drew her knees up to her chest and curled her arms around them. "Would you think I was terrible if I told you I was disappointed? Once it was all over, you just gave him that usual 'all is forgiven' stuff. Maybe that was the right thing to do. That was what I told myself, and what I pretty much believed. Right then it wasn't a big deal anyway, I was just happy about being safe again. But part of me would really have liked to see you make him pay a little more than that, you know? He pulled me away from my family, my home, my _life_, was going to marry me just because of that stupid scroll. He couldn't have cared less about what I thought or wanted. And it, it would have been nice if that had made you a little angrier. If... seeing me there, like that, had hurt you a little more.

"And then there was Toma." She gave a mirthless laugh. "That one was even better. This time it's a twelve-year-old who's dragging me away to marry me. The leader of a whole _island_ full of guys who think 'courtship' is finding the girl you want and taking her for yourself. And once again you come in and rescue me at the last minute." It had been an even closer call that time, with Ranma's strength, skill, and resolve the only things that had kept her from her own watery sex-change. "You even had to blow up the island's sacred water to save me. If it weren't for that, if it hadn't all come down to that fight between you and him, everything would be different. You would have been cured for real, and your father and Mousse too."

Akane drew a deep, shuddering breath. This approach seemed to be working. She was getting nearer to the heart of the matter now, circling in, coming ever closer with each new memory, allowing herself to work up to the deepest level of pain. It was hard, so hard, but now that she'd started she knew there was no way she could stop.

"Kirin... Toma... Both of them, just like Kuno, all those guys at school. Maybe it wasn't any big deal to you, Ranma, but it mattered to me. When has anyone ever tried to take control of your life away from you like that?" Akane asked bitterly. "Cologne was the only one who even came close, and she deliberately gave you a way to fight your way out. Nobody's ever been that considerate of _me_. They just reach out to take what they want. Even poor Ryoga, back when Shampoo first got her hands on that stupid soap, although that wasn't his fault." It had taken her a while, but eventually Akane had realized what must really have happened back then. Ryoga's actions of the time couldn't have been from his own choice. That just wasn't the kind of guy he was, and anyway he only saw her as a friend. It had to have been the direct result of Shampoo messing with his mind while trying to get her stupid soap back. For a moment Akane glowered in anger over the Amazon's heartless tactics, but then forced herself to push those thoughts away.

"All I could do was run from him. All I could do was wait for you. All I could do was sit there... like a coward... like a doll..."

She heaved a long series of breaths, clinging to another set of memories. Her own body had been stolen from her, and her spirit placed in the shell of a cursed hot springs doll. When it was all over, Akane had clung to Ranma and cried from relief, letting out a confession of how scared she'd been. An outside observer, contrasting that scene to the aftermath of Ranma's battle with Kirin, would certainly conclude that the affair of the cursed doll had been far harder on one Akane Tendo. "Maybe it was, in a way. But... but even though I can remember how scared I was, and how close I came to being killed or stuck forever out of my body, it's still a better memory than the other one.

"Do you know why, Ranma?" Akane's eyes snapped open. She stared out the window, glaring up into the sky as if imagining her wayward fiancé circling there in cursed form. "It was because I stood up for myself and fought. I didn't wait for you to come in like a hurricane and make everything all right again. Without me, you'd have been lost for sure! It was because _I_ fought and tried so hard there that we both came out of it okay!

"I wish I could say the same thing more often." Akane's head fell, and her shoulders drooped. "I wish I was different. It... it's weird, you know? I can fight, I can stand up for myself and for what I believe in, I take the lead all the time at school with my classmates and my friends. I always hated the idea that girls should be submissive just because they _were_ girls. But... but..." Here she paused, fighting away a rising urge to cry. "When did it happen? Was it always really a lie? Why can't I hold on to what I believe when the going gets really tough? I tried just a little, each time. Kirin, Toma, whatever... I put up a bit of fight in the very beginning, and then I lost all heart. I let them dress me up... just like a doll, and, and bring me to Kirin... I... I would... if you hadn't gotten there, I would have even let them g- go ahead and m- marry me to him..."

The tears were flowing now, but Akane's control had not yet failed her utterly. "All, all I could do was wait... and hope... count on you to f- fight through everyone and save me. Why?" she whispered plaintively. "Why couldn't I do more? Why couldn't I stand up for myself? It, it's not right... what's wrong with me?

"And you." Akane blinked the tears out of her eyes, feeling the renewed slow burn of an emotion with which she was much more comfortable. "How _can_ I be so stupid anyway? Before Shampoo tricked Ryoga, before we crashed on Toma's island, before that bastard Kirin came swooping down out of the clouds, there was someone else. Someone who decided to do what he wanted to do. Who ignored all my protests. Who didn't care how scared I was when some guy I'd never seen before grabbed me, slung me under his arm, and dashed away from my home. I didn't know you, thanks to Shampoo I couldn't remember you, all I knew was here was someone strong enough to throw me around without any trouble. You were even jumping two stories into the air with me under one arm like it was nothing! I couldn't fight back, I couldn't do anything, all I could find the courage to do was hang there and beg you to stop it!

"Do you know how much I hate that memory?!" Akane snarled, forgetting for the moment about keeping her voice down. "Do you know how hard I tried to bury it? To forget I was living with someone who could just decide to _make_ me do something if he really felt like it?! I can't believe how stupid I was, how stupid I've been. How could I have EVER trusted you to be the one to protect me from stuff like that?! Kirin, Toma... so you got me away from them. So what?! What the hell good is it if you're gonna treat me the same way! What good is it... what good are you... what good... am I..."

Silence fell, and stretched for a long time. When Akane eventually broke it, she could only find enough strength to whisper. "That first time was a long time ago, Ranma, and anyway I wasn't in my right mind then. Afterwards I let myself think it was Shampoo's fault at least as much as yours. But last night showed me just how stupid I was being. It proved I couldn't trust you at all not to do that, not to force me to go along with whatever you wanted if you wanted it bad enough. I guess I should have known from the beginning, but I didn't want to think like that... I wanted to believe you'd protect me... wanted there to be someone to save me, even from myself I guess. Admitting that... it hurts even worse than what you did.

"I trusted you to take care of me. I can't be that stupid and careless again. And I can't live like this." Akane's eyes snapped open, and in one fluid motion she rolled out of her bed and to her feet. "Don't you ever dare try to force me into anything again, Ranma. I am _nobody's _doll—not even yours."

-----------------------

"Good morning, Nabiki," Kasumi said with a cheerful smile. "Did you sleep well?"

"Morning, Sis. Yeah, I did," the middle Tendo answered, following her reply with a satisfied yawn. Sundays were the only day Nabiki could afford to sleep until what she considered a reasonable hour, and were treasured for that. This particular Sunday was even better than most, since with her father, Genma, and Happosai gone she had been able last night to convince Kasumi to serve breakfast at this unusually late hour. Ranma had complained, but after the recent developments Nabiki had considered that just another benefit. "So when do we eat?"

"Well, Ranma has been up for quite awhile now, but Akane hasn't come downstairs yet. Could you go up and see if she's still... oh. Never mind, I hear her now."

"You do?" Nabiki asked, straining her own ears. Her senses still weren't at one hundred percent—they never were before her first sugar fix of the day—but she was just able to make out the sound of Akane's bedroom door opening. Kasumi headed back into the kitchen; meanwhile, the sounds of Akane's approach became more easily recognizable as she moved through the hall and down the stairs. _'Hmm, that sounds more like stomping than stepping. Did something happen already to set off her temper? I certainly wouldn't put it past Ranma to make an idiot of himself at any hour of the day, but didn't Kasumi say she hadn't been out of her room yet?'_ Nabiki grimaced as a new thought struck her. _'Maybe she looked out her window and saw him flying off with Shampoo.'_

"Where's Ranma?" Akane demanded, rounding the corner and catching sight of Nabiki.

_'Or maybe not.' _"Haven't got a clue, sis. I only just woke all the way up."

"Ranma is out practicing in the dojo," Kasumi replied from inside the kitchen. "Would you please go and get him?"

"Right," Akane said, speaking the word through clenched teeth. Nabiki still wasn't operating on full, but enough of her curiosity was on-line to prompt her to follow Akane out into the yard. The youngest Tendo didn't notice at first, but by the time she'd covered half the distance to her destination her sister's presence registered. "Nabiki, what are you doing?"

"Moi? Just getting a bit of morning exercise, little sister."

"Well, stop it! I need to talk to Ranma about something, and I mean in private!" There was no way in heaven or hell that she was going to say everything she needed to with Nabiki in earshot. Bad enough that Ranma had pushed her so hard last night, hard enough to crush her spirit and her pride, but it would be even worse if someone else found out.

"Okay, fine. I'll just listen to the tape from the bugs in the dojo later on."

That was enough to knock Akane's anger aside for the moment. "W- what?!"

Nabiki raised one eyebrow. "Surely you knew that already. I've got microphones and cameras all over the place. Dojo, yard, house, you name it."

"NABIIKIII!!"

The middle Tendo could no longer maintain her impassive mien. She broke out into laughter. "Oh come on, Akane, you're so gullible sometimes! Of course I'm kidding!" She waved one hand, turned and began walking away, satisfied that she'd given her sister just a little more anger to work out on a certain rebellious resource. _'Hope you like today's little opening volley, Ranma baby, because there's plenty more where that came from.'_

"Honestly!" Akane grumped, glaring at her sister's retreating back for a few seconds. She then turned on her heel and took another stomp toward the dojo.

The instant her foot hit the ground, a resounding, booming crash shattered the morning stillness.

Akane blinked, stopped dead in her tracks, stared down at the ground. After a few puzzled seconds, she took another step forward.

A second, louder roar split the air.

The youngest Tendo gulped, looked wildly around as if searching for help, then took a hesitant step backward.

This explosion of sound was the loudest yet.

As Akane began gauging the distance to the roof of the house and trying to screw up the nerve to attempt such a jump, Nabiki charged out to the middle of the yard. "RYOGA!" she screamed at the top of her lungs. "STOP RIGHT THERE!!"

"Huh?" came the reply, muffled a bit but clearly understandable. "Is that... Akane's sister?" The words were followed by the appearance of their speaker, as Ryoga vaulted into the air barely a foot away from the other side of the wall that bordered the Tendo property. It was clear that Nabiki's reaction had only just been in time to prevent him from going through the barrier instead of over it.

As his leap carried him above the obstruction, Ryoga caught sight of Akane. His jump didn't have much lateral motion, since he'd merely been trying to get a better field of view, but he was able to angle forward and touch down just on the other side of the wall. "I can't believe it," he said, eyes wide with amazement. "Can't believe I made it here so quickly."

"Well, hello Mr. P." This was Ranma, who'd just now appeared at the doorway of the dojo. He muttered the words too quietly for anyone to make out exactly what he'd said, and was momentarily surprised when Ryoga stiffened, flushed, and clenched his hands into fists anyway. Then he reminded himself that this was Ryoga, who occasionally seemed to get offended just because Ranma was breathing wrong. It wouldn't be that unusual for the Lost Boy to turn and charge him with a cry of "Ranma, prepare to die!"

Ryoga didn't do that, though, he just stood there in the same posture he'd had before, looking resolutely toward Akane and away from Ranma

"Hello, Ryoga," Akane replied. "We're going to have breakfast in a little while." _'Just as soon as I finish giving Ranma what he's got coming.'_ She paused, taking a good look at her newly-arrived friend. He certainly seemed to be tightly wound this morning. His eyes were bloodshot, he was breathing heavily, and his hands were clenched strongly enough to whiten the knuckles. _'The poor guy's probably been wandering for days without seeing anybody he knows or having a good home-cooked meal. Stupid Ranma, I could have cooked breakfast this morning if he hadn't been such a rotten jerk last night. Guess I'll just have to do the best I can to make Ryoga feel better.'_ "Would you like to join us?"

He didn't even seem to notice the question. "Akane, I have something for you!" Setting down his pack, he rooted in it for a moment, then straightened up and tossed a sealed letter over to her.

"For me?" Akane said, catching and looking down at the missive.

"This shtick again, Ryoga?" Ranma asked. "Oh well, at least it got you back here at a good time for once. I need to talk to you about something."

Ryoga ignored this, as did Akane. "Ryoga, this letter is addressed to Ranma," she said. "Did you give me the wrong one?"

"No, Akane. That's a challenge letter. I want you to give it to that honorless bastard for me."

"Hey, Pig-butt, I'm right here—YAAAH!" Ranma was caught by surprise as Ryoga, still without looking at him, wrenched a handful of bandanas off his forehead and sent them smashing toward the pigtailed teen. It was almost harder to evade the random spray than it would have been a focused attack.

"What did he do you now, Ryoga?" Akane asked, her expression a curious mixture of anger and sympathy.

"He... he... Akane, there's something I have to tell you!" Ryoga exclaimed, clenching his eyes shut. "I never thought I'd have to face a moment like this, but... Akane... I, I..." He gulped, struggling for words as tears streamed down his cheeks. "I'm not a whole man!"

"We did _not_ need to hear that this early in the morning," Nabiki drawled. "Out of curiosity though, shouldn't your voice be an octave higher?"

Ryoga ignored the commentary, as he ignored all things—sign posts, directions, compasses—that didn't make any sense. He rummaged in his pack again, pulling out a kettle and a stove. He switched on the latter and set the former on top of it. "It... it's not fair... but I could never keep something like this from you!"

_'I don't believe it... I absolutely don't believe it... he's gonna come clean to her about P-chan?! Just when I finally get a chance for him to be cured of the pig? This is nuts even for my life!'_ Ranma stared, stunned into immobility as Ryoga walked over to the koi pond, scooped up a pailful of water, and walked back to his stove. Only then, jolted by adrenaline at the sight of the disaster that was about to happen, did he unfreeze. "Wait, you idiot! Don't do it!"

As if that had been the signal he was waiting for, Ryoga dumped the water over his head.

Ranma was already moving toward him, even though a part of him knew it was too little, too late. As the muscular, fanged Japanese boy shrunk down into a small black bundle, he came to a resigned stop. _'Ryoga you moron, this is bad timing even for—what the hell?!'_

"R- Ryoga?" Akane gasped, taking several tottering steps toward him. "What... how...?"

"Oh my!" Kasumi exclaimed.

"You said it, Sis," Nabiki commented. "Hey, Saotome? If this is contagious, your butt is going to be out on the street faster than your dad can cheat on a diet."

Ranma didn't even hear the remark. He was too busy staring at his transformed rival. _'My mistake. He ain't all black,'_ Ranma realized. _'There's some dark grey mixed in there too.'_ He stared at the falcon that had been Ryoga Hibiki, trying to fight a nagging suspicion that Ryoga's cursed form was also larger than his. _'Guess Shampoo found him pretty quick. Maybe that's why I didn't see her at all yesterday.'_ Given recent events, he'd been expecting to see the Amazon sooner or later. _'So she found Ryoga and he was smart enough to take her up on her offer too. Although...'_ A worried frown creased Ranma's brow. _'I don't get what the deal is with the attitude. The moron better have thought this through enough to realize Akane's gonna want to know why he'd want to take a Jusenkyo curse. Being able to fly is a plenty good enough reason, but he oughta be acting grateful to me to make it seem real. He better not blow it as soon as Akane manages to get herself together enough to ask him why he did this.'_

"Ryoga..." Akane murmured, beginning to walk again. She reached the pile of clothes and knelt down, first sweeping her gaze over the bird still halfway shrouded in his shirt, then staring directly into his eyes. She opened her mouth as if to say something else, then, thinking better of it, reached over and grasped the kettle. Ranma noted with some disgust that Ryoga's transformation back to human caused his clothes to shift right back into their previous positions, leaving him perfectly clothed and perfectly decent. He suspected that even if there had been a wardrobe malfunction, Akane wouldn't have reacted nearly as badly as she did for him.

"Now you know," Ryoga choked out, turning his head away and clenching his eyes shut.

"But... but why? I know you and Ranma are rivals, but... just because he did...? Why would you do something as stupid as this?" Akane asked.

"You don't think it was my choice, do you?!" Ryoga demanded. "Shampoo did it to me! She said that since Ranma now had a curse that reduced his fighting power so much, I had to get one too. Because she wasn't going to let any of his rivals have that kind of advantage over him!"

"Oh... oh my... oh dear..." Kasumi was the only one immediately able to find words, and her reflexive response seemed more to underscore the thunderous silence than break it.

After perhaps fifty heartbeats, Ranma unfroze, at least enough for thought. _'I don't believe it... I damn well do not believe it. He actually found another way.' _His mouth twisted into a grimace of bitter anger. _'An even more convincing reason for how he wound up turning into a bird, or at least Akane's sure gonna think so. And all he had to do was lie through his teeth. Guess for someone with a track record like P-chan's, that ain't too hard to do.'_

Another dozen heartbeats later, he felt ready for more than just silent thought. "Ryoga..." He began a slow stalk toward the Lost Boy, cracking his knuckles as he went.

He'd covered only a quarter of the distance when Akane's head whipped round. As she made eye contact with him, Ranma's muscles froze again, and the only thought he could manage was _'Oh, crap.'_

"Rannnmaaaa..." Akane growled, the word escaping in tones far quieter than her usual outrage, and yet somehow more threatening for all of that. Her battle aura writhed and danced around her, outshining the morning sun as she moved slowly and steadily toward her fiancé.

Later, he would think back to his father's training, and be grateful. The old man had slipped up many times, but at least he'd taught some important lessons very thoroughly and well. And so it was that when Akane was yet several feet away, Ranma, his conscious mind still frozen, whirled by reflex alone and ran for his life.

-----------------------

He stared down to the streets below.

_'Stupid Ryoga.'_

He looked to the skies above.

_'Uncute tomboy.'_

Back to the earth.

_'This kinda stuff is really getting old.'_

It was the heavens' turn now.

_'Maybe I did say it was no big deal, how everybody always blames me for everything. But that don't make it all right!'_

Ranma looked broodingly down into the crowds moving along the Nerima streets. Still no sign of Ryoga. It was of course a long-shot, but by no means was it impossible to imagine that Ryoga might get lost, wander away from the Tendo homestead, and stumble blindly into his rival's path. The pigtailed teen's mouth curved into a grim smile as he imagined it. Bacon boy here, with no Akane around to go ballistic over Ranma 'bullying the weak', no tomboy for Ryoga to lie to and hide behind. _'At least he didn't try and use his new cursed form to take up where P-chan left off. Probably figured even Akane would see through something like that, what with two other people also having a falcon curse.'_ Ranma snorted. _He_ was none too certain that Akane should be given that much credit.

_'I swear, it's like two steps forward, two steps back with her. Only last night she was admitting she was wrong and giving me a real apology, a better one than I've ever got from her. But this morning, Ryoga shows up and spews his usual 'It's all Ranma's fault!' junk, and she's right in my face ready to go for the kill. And what the heck am I supposed to do about it? Besides beat the crud out of Ryoga, anyway, but as satisfying as that's gonna be it won't solve anything in the long run. Akane's still gonna be thinking he was telling the truth about getting cursed for no good reason, and of course blaming me for it._

_'Worst thing is I still can't tell her about P-chan. Yeah, it's not like it would be revealing Ryoga's weakness anymore, but if she found out that secret...'_ Ranma blanched at the thought, feeling the surge of creeping horror displace some of his anger. _'Yeah, that's it. Just gotta keep things in perspective. Sure, Akane's real mad at me, and the next few days are probably gonna be hell, but it could've been worse.'_

He fixed that thought firmly in his mind, holding there and taking a long series of deep breaths. After a minute or so the remnants of his anger at the latest injustice faded down to ignorable levels. He stared down into the streets for several more seconds, scanning the crowds for any hint of Ryoga, then switched his attention once more to the clouds above him. They were still arrayed in what he privately thought of as Nerima Skyscape 22: It Could Start Raining At Any Moment, Or Stay Bone Dry All Day Long. Ranma shook his head wryly, unable to decide whether he really wanted to keep watching for Ryoga, or head to the sky for a few hours. He'd been leaving that decision up to the kami, and so far they seemed undecided as well. Either that or they were pulling his chain.

After another ten minutes passed, Ranma began feeling a bit restless. Sitting here and waiting for Ryoga to wander by so he could safely beat him to a pulp was all well and good, but there was one really big drawback—thanks to Nabiki and her sleeping habits, he hadn't had breakfast yet today. Ranma gave one long last look to the streets below, scanning all the ground he could from his current eight-story vantage point. Still seeing no sign of Ryoga, and hearing his stomach give what was more a snarl than a grumble, he began jumping from rooftop to rooftop, heading toward the nearest concentration of snack stands. There would be several open at this hour whose young male vendors were willing to provide a certain cute redhead with–

Ranma skidded to a stop on a rooftop three stories from street level, blinking in sudden realization. _'Huh. Can't do that anymore, now can I?'_ The Saotome heir chewed his lower lip in unhappy understanding. _'Dang, I never thought about that. About the only free meal this new curse is gonna get me is if I catch a pigeon or something. Ain't like Pop and I never did that on the road, but at least they were cooked then.'_ After a few more seconds of thought, and a couple of even louder protests from his stomach, Ranma squared his shoulders and began moving again. He didn't have any money, and without his old curse there wasn't any good way of getting free food from strangers. That left Ucchan's and the Cat Café.

Both had the advantage of superb food at no monetary cost, and although Akane got annoyed whenever he went to either she was already ticked enough to make that a moot point. Each place also had a serious disadvantage, though. At the Cat Café was Mousse, who knew about his new curse and had already proved how willing he was to exploit it, and waterproof protection was currently not available. Ranma knew that as soon as Mousse saw his face (or, more likely, heard Shampoo's welcoming cry of "Airen!"), the cold water and blades would be flying. If he wanted anything like a peaceful meal there, he'd have to either luck out and arrive when Mousse wasn't around—highly unlikely as the restaurant didn't make deliveries this early in the day—or knock the half-blind boy out hard and fast.

None of those problems applied to Ucchan's, but the fact that Ukyo herself was away on a trip was a pretty big drawback.

"What the heck. I could use a good fight anyway," Ranma remarked, adjusting his course toward the Amazon stronghold.

Several minutes and numerous city blocks later, he came within sight of the restaurant. It was a sight he had seen many times before, but this time there was a very unusual addition to the tableau. Ranma stopped and stared, taking in the view.

Shampoo stood in the lane behind the restaurant, out of sight of casual passersby. Ranma suspected this was deliberate, because her current attire was a far cry from her usual knock-'em-dead sexy appearance. In addition to her typical silk pantsuit, the Amazon wore a strange harness of leather straps that twined and twisted over her arms, legs, and torso at strange, asymmetrical angles. Wooden bars, some straight, others hinged in the middle, connected some straps to each other, along with several occurrences of gears and pulleys where others curved past each other. From his current distance, Ranma could also barely make out small wooden pieces fixed at irregular intervals into all the straps.

As he moved closer, he saw the purpose for those bits. There was a large sack next to the Amazon, and she was currently rummaging through this. Pulling out a large number of long, thin pieces of balsa wood shaped roughly like feathers, Shampoo began affixing these to the wooden fixtures in the straps, which Ranma was now close enough to see were slotted clamps.

When Shampoo had finished with this endeavor, she looked even more ridiculous than before. The balsa wood sticking out from her reminded him of a demented cross between a kiwi and a pufferfish. Ranma watched, more mystified than ever, as the Amazon stared up to the roof of the Cat Café with a scowl of concentration, tensed, and then sprang. Unsurprisingly, considering the flimsiness of balsa wood and the force of the jump, most of the 'feathers' were either shattered or torn completely from the harness by the wind of her passage. Frankly, Ranma considered it a bit surprising that she even retained seven of them.

Shampoo jumped back to the ground below, a move which divested her costume of all but two of its remaining accessories. The Amazon fiddled with several of the gears, causing the straps to slither and shift over her, settling into a completely new configuration. _'Wonder how it did that without messin' up her clothes,'_ Ranma mused. Of more interest, though, was the question of just what Shampoo was trying to accomplish here. To someone raised by Genma Saotome, it seemed pretty obvious that this was some sort of training regimen, probably one to build up your agility and ability in the air. Anything more specific than that, he'd have to get from Shampoo herself.

The thought of learning a new trick or technique momentarily pushed aside hunger, along with pretty much all other concerns. Ranma jumped down even as Shampoo was jumping up, timing his approach to land a few feet away from her at the same time she touched down. She actually caught sight of him almost in the same instant as she made her leap, and the surprise destroyed her focus along with every piece of balsa wood.

Not that the Amazon cared in the slightest. No sooner had she landed than she was darting forward, a huge welcoming smile on her face. "Airen! So good to see you!" Shampoo enthused, grabbing him in a huge hug.

"HHYYEARRHHH!" That was the sound of Ranma, trying to gasp for air as Shampoo drove it from his lungs, and at the same time cry out in pain as several splinters of balsa wood gouged him in uncomfortable places.

"Ranma?" Shampoo asked, pulling back just a little. "Why you make such weird face and turn pale? Did stupid Akane make poison for breakfast today? You need Amazon medicine and real meal?"

The pigtailed teen pulled back, plucked out various splinters at Amaguriken speed, then grumbled, "No, I need to not get turned into a pincushion by whatever crazy getup that is you're wearing!"

Shampoo blinked, looked down at herself, sweatdropped, and offered a feeble grin. "Um, sorry, Airen. Shampoo make you extra big order of ramen to make up for it." Then she brightened. "Oh! Have too too good news to tell, too! Two thing!"

Ranma attempted to parse that last communication, and failed miserably to extract anything other than 'good news'. "Uh... what?"

_'Shampoo start with less good news.' _"Great-Grandmother send Mousse on trip back to China! Not know how long he be gone, Ranma, but is sure he be gone awhile. We not have to worry about stupid duck bother us for weeks, maybe months!"

"Back to China? For real this time?" Ranma asked dubiously. That certainly hadn't turned out like it was supposed to last time. On the other hand, on that occasion it had been Mousse who declared that he was going, and that he was going for good. Small wonder that hadn't panned out, but if Cologne had told him he had to do it, and that it wouldn't be forever... "What for?"

The Amazon shrugged. "Not know. Only thing what Shampoo care about was how long he be gone."

"So he's not there now." Excellent. That meant he could have a long, peaceful meal, and probably even take his time asking Shampoo about what she was trying to learn with that funky outfit.

"No." Shampoo let out a long, satisfied sigh. "Great-Grandmother see him off at airport, make sure he really leave." She paused for a few moments, just savoring the moment. Mousse was gone, Great-Grandmother was temporarily away, she had Ranma all to herself now, and he was going to be in an even better mood once she gave him the last piece of good news. "That is today's good fortune. Had big piece yesterday, too. Spent whole day flying high in sky, looking down, and Shampoo finally manage to find stupid lost boy Ryoga. Did just what you ask, Ranma! He not hide as Akane pet pig, not put strain on you honor no more."

Contrary to Shampoo's expectations, Ranma didn't jump with surprise and joy at this communication. "Yeah, I already know," he grumbled.

"H- huh? Why Ranma say like that?" Shampoo asked, feeling her own bubbly happiness begin to congeal. He certainly didn't look happy to hear that. "You change mind?"

The pigtailed boy grimaced. "Nah, that ain't it. Thanks for what you did. I'm just royally ticked off at that stupid Ryoga! You know what he did, Shampoo?! Believe it or not, he managed to find his way to the dojo this morning, and he told everybody about his new curse."

"But... that good, right?"

"It'd be real good if the moron had told them that he took a curse like that cause of how cool it is to be able to fly. Or said that it was to help him find his way by being able to see more landmarks. Or anything other that what he did! You know what that jerk actually did say was the reason? He said you cursed him on purpose so he wouldn't have an advantage over me in a fight!"

Shampoo made a sound remarkably like a disgusted cat. "Stupid Ryoga. Should have sucker-punch him harder yesterday."

Ranma blinked. "Huh? Sucker-punched him?"

"Mm-hm. Shampoo find him camp out, fly back to bathhouse and change, get water, run back there as fast as can so he not wander off in meantime, tell him everything while still trying to catch breath." The Amazon scowled at the memory. "After all that, he have nerve to say, 'No, thanks'! Say he rather have curse he already have. So Shampoo pretend she see Akane behind him, then when he turn, hit him hard enough to stun even stupid Ryoga, and dump water on him anyway." By now her scowl had morphed to a satisfied smile. "Was really funny, too. He still sitting there in shock by time I get bored and leave. Wonder how long he–"

"I don't believe this!" Ranma exploded, cutting her off. "You mean he was tellin' the truth? You _did_ curse him even though he decided he didn't want it?!"

Shampoo blinked, looking much as would someone asked "The sky _is_ blue?!" in such a tone. "Uh-huh. Why Ranma ask like that?"

"What kinda stupid question is that?!"

The Amazon frowned. "Is not stupid! Shampoo did just what Ranma ask, and want to know why he yell now!"

"What I...? Dammit, I wanted you to offer the water to him an' tell him how much better it would be to replace his old curse, and let him do it himself!"

"Did, did, and did," she retorted. "And then he no make right decision, so Shampoo had to do it for him."

"Is that right," Ranma gritted through clenched teeth. "So I guess that's what you woulda done for me too, huh? If I didn't 'make the right decisi–' "

SMACK!

His accusation was cut short by Shampoo's full-armed slap. Ranma staggered backward, caught between shock, anger, and discomfort at the sight of the tears leaking from the lavender-haired girl's eyes.

When she spoke, though, only the tiniest tremble could be heard in her words. "Ranma talk about his honor two day ago, how Ryoga spit on it, but not seem to care at all today. If, if that how much grateful Ranma feel, maybe Shampoo should no have brought water back at all!"

And then she was gone, disappearing over the side of the building. The slam of the door as Shampoo entered shook the restaurant from basement to rooftop. Ranma took one hesitant step in the direction in which she had vanished, then stopped.

He wasn't sure how long he stood there, motionless, directionless, and uncertain, before the rain finally began to fall.

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Thunder shook the air, rumbling over his body like a living shell of sound. Winds gusted and swirled. Rain lashed down in sheets, pounding the earth below. The storm had started slowly, opening with the deceptively calm light rain that had transformed him. The wind had started as little more than a stiff breeze, which had actually been helpful at the time as he made his way into the sky. Gravity had been as negligible as ever, but the weight of the encounter with Shampoo had tugged far harder on him. The breeze had held steady for awhile, and the rain had only slowly grown in tempo. But eventually, around the time of the first clap of thunder, both had kicked up with a vengeance. It was far from the worst storm ever to lash the streets of Nerima, but it was certainly nothing safe to fly through.

Ranma stared absently down at the clouds below him. They were lit by another bolt of lightning, the flash visible even in the warm sunlight. _'Glad I'm not down in that.'_

He shifted back to looking straight ahead of him, flying slowly along on autopilot. His hunger was more or less assuaged, as Ranma had taken the opportunity to grab a couple of octopus puffs from a vendor preoccupied with escaping the rain. With that distraction out of the way, it was time for some serious thought.

_'What did Shampoo expect me to do, anyway? Thank her? She deliberately gave Ryoga a curse! All I wanted her to do was offer it to him, tell him all the stuff she told me, and let him finally cure himself of that stupid pig body!'_

As if it were an echo, he heard the Amazon's voice echo in his memories. "Did, did, and did." _'No, you didn't!' _he retorted. _'He was supposed to be the one to make the decision! You shoulda just left him alone to think about it, given him enough time to realize he'd made a stupid mistake! All you shoulda done to make his mind up was maybe splash him with normal water and punt that stupid pigskin into the sky! So what if he told you 'No' then. Even as big an idiot as Ryoga would eventually wake up an' realize he'd made a stupid mistake, take it back and take you up on the offer._

_'And you didn't care about that, did you? Ryoga didn't tell you he needed time to think it over, he just gave a flat 'no', and that was all you needed to hear. Why shouldn't I think you'd've done the same thing to me?'_ Ranma asked himself.

He flew in dark, brooding silence for awhile. Akane wasn't the only case where it was two steps forward, two back. _'I really let myself think that maybe things were starting to change,'_ he lamented. _'Was this all just another trick? Like that stupid Instant Nannichuan that she used to get me to go out with her, or the red thread of fate? Damn it, Shampoo, I actually did think you meant something real this time. Guess that was pretty stupid, huh?'_

That thought brought with it another wave of bitterness. Ranma let his thoughts lapse into silence as he flew along, the darkness of his emotions contrasting sharply to the bright glimmer of sunlight reflecting off the clouds below him. Eventually, though, the worst of it began to fade. The Saotome heir had plenty of practice putting bad experiences behind him, after all. He knew very well that brooding over all the injustices of his life wouldn't help him with anything except mastering the Shi Shi Hokodan. And he was quite satisfied with his current command of that little trick of the Art.

_'Look on the bright side, Ranma. So what if Shampoo would've screwed me over on this. It don't change the fact that I did make the choice myself, and it sure don't change the fact that it was the right choice to make.'_ Ranma considered that for a few moments, and a slight sense of uneasiness began to grow at the back of his mind. Eventually it progressed far enough to be put into words: _'Since this was the right decision, what if she had made it for me? Would that really have been so bad? Is it really so terrible that she did it for Ryoga?'_

A large part of him—unquestionably the majority—answered with an emphatic YES. Even if it was what was best for him, what right would Shampoo have had to decide that herself? What right had she had to actually do so for Ryoga?

But there was a part of him that wondered. Wondered whether being forced into this would really have been all that much worse than missing out on it entirely. Was it better always to decide for yourself, even when you made the wrong decision? As he considered that question, the sense of uneasiness grew. The most basic tenets of honor meant that you _didn't_ make all decisions yourself, except for the decision as to whether or not to act honorably. There were choices that a decent person had to let be made for him.

_'But that wasn't how it was here,'_ Ranma thought, shaking his head as if to cast aside the questions. _'She said she was doing this for me. That means she should've left the choice up to me. And there's no way to think she would have, not after what she did with Ryoga. She said it herself—she didn't even try to change his mind, or argue him out of it. Didn't give him any time at all to wake up and realize what a dumb mistake he'd made. She just went right ahead and stuck him with the new curse.'_

"Water away from Jusenkyo will slowly lose permanent power... one more day is okay, two, probably okay... after that? Is pushing luck."

If Ranma hadn't currently been gliding, his wings would have skipped a beat along with his heart.

A few hundred feet of sky passed beneath/above/around him before he could think clearly again. _'Oh, crap. I forgot about that. Idiot!'_ He would have chewed his lower lip nervously, had he currently had one to chew. _'If she hadn't've done that chances are Ryoga woulda missed his chance. A dummy like him probably would've taken a week to see something so obvious.'_ Ranma gritted his beak as a mental picture of P-chan stumbling onto the Tendo grounds, being scooped up and cooed over by Akane, sitting in her lap, being fed from her plate, joining her for a night's repose. _'Maybe even longer... maybe...'_

Ranma flew in silence both mental and physical for quite awhile longer. At last, though, when he could no longer hold back, he completed the thought. _'Maybe he never would have.'_

Things were starting to look a good bit clearer now, and Ranma found himself only liking part of what he saw. _'Forget about your curse, just think about what happened with Ryoga. There ain't no more P-chan. No more chance for him to abuse my honor and Akane's cluelessness. I'm never gonna see that stupid reject from a sausage factory cuddle up against her chest, or hide behind her and get me in trouble. No more gritting my teeth wondering just what the hell I'm supposed to do about him taking advantage of Akane. All that's good.'_

He heaved a thin, whistling sigh. Somehow, now that he was really focusing on Ryoga, and not himself, the question of whether Shampoo had the right to make such a big decision seemed less clear-cut. _'Okay, Ranma, let's think like this was a battle. What Ryoga was doing was wrong, the kinda stuff a martial artist ought to prevent. And I tried everything I could think of to prevent it. I couldn't tell Akane the truth, since that would mean exposing Ryoga's weakness, one that was partly my fault. And anyway once she learned it she'd probably snap and kill P-chan, whether she meant to or not.'_ As tough as the little porker was, Ranma doubted he could have survived a full-power Akane Tendo Haymaker of Rage.

_'I gave plenty of hints, enough that a normal person coulda figured it out. It was never enough to make Akane understand, but it should have been enough to make Ryoga scared she would if he kept showing up.'_ Ranma snorted. _'Stupid me, thinking P-chan would have enough brains to put two and two together like that. Or maybe he just figured that if Akane hadn't clued in yet, she never was gonna make the connection.'_ He considered this, then rejected it. _'Nah. He nearly got busted wide open when he had that stupid Mark of the Gods. Still can't believe he managed to drink all that hot water instead of Akane getting it on him to wash him off._

_'So Ryoga was too stubborn and Akane was too dumb for the hints to work. What else was I supposed to do? Just let it slide? That'd be wrong too. Give up a cure to him, if I ever got my hands on one? Maybe,'_ Ranma allowed, knowing all the while that there was no way in hell he'd have actually done so. _'But it ain't like I ever got the chance to. Challenge him to a real fight, tell him that if I won he'd stop playing at being P-chan, and beat the living daylights out of him? But what would I do after that when he went right back to doing it anyway?'_

A few more minutes of thought later, Ranma finally, reluctantly, accepted the conclusion that had been lurking in the back of his mind for the last half mile of sky. _'Dammit all, this was the only way to fix the problem. Shampoo did the right thing, at least with Ryoga. And if I think that, if I say that for him giving him the curse anyway was the right thing to do but she oughta have let me decide for myself...'_ He paused for a moment, wondering if he ought to feel guilty about reaching such a conclusion. A memory of P-chan nuzzling against Akane's chest quickly banished that uncertainty._ 'If the right thing was different for Ryoga and me, why should I think that what Shampoo did with him shows anything about what she woulda done with me?'_

Long moments of scrutiny failed to turn up even one reason. Moreover, they raised certain other suspicions that were rather less comfortable. _'Forget Ryoga. He don't matter for this part. It really does look like Shampoo let me make the call myself. She made her offer, and it sure looked like she expected me to take her up on it then and there.'_ Something which had slipped his mind in the immediacy of finding out that Shampoo truly had cursed Ryoga against his will. _'I didn't do that, though. Even though there wasn't much time left she let me take my time and decide...'_ His eyes widened in further realization. _'Heck, they were both my decisions. I told her I did want what she'd offered, and I said how Ryoga was messing up my honor, asked her to fix it for me. And she did. And I threw it back in her face... yelled at her... made her cry..._

_'I gotta apologize.'_ It was none too palatable a thought, but Ranma faced it squarely. _'I can't believe how much I just screwed things up. I owe her—big time—and this is how I pay her back? No way. Ain't gonna happen. Not gonna be like Pop; I may make mistakes, but I'm darn well gonna fix them when I do._

_'Still, it's probably not a good idea to go back there now. Better give Shampoo a little time to calm down.'_ His thoughts lapsed into silence for awhile. Eventually, though, they started again, bringing up another unpleasant matter that needed to be faced.

_'One thing ain't changed—Ryoga's still cursed because of me, even if he does have a better curse now. Shampoo did what she did because I asked her to. And now that I've thought about it, and if I had to do it over again, I'd even tell her to splash him whether he wanted it or not.'_ Ranma frowned in thought. Maybe there was an element of responsibility there for him, but it was certainly larger for Ryoga. After all, this had all come about because of the Lost Boy's own dishonorable actions. Ryoga ought to consider himself lucky that Ranma had found such a painless way of dealing with his alter ego. _'Do I really owe him anything? I've covered for him I don't know how many times back when he was still P-chan. Ain't he the one that owes me? Why the heck should I give him any of my soap?_

A few more moments of thought came up with a couple of convincing reasons. _'It really ain't like I owe the jerk anything. But if I do give him a bar, it'll have to help calm him down. Besides the fact that if I don't, he's bound to try and fight me for it once he learns Shampoo gave me the stuff. And if I make sure Akane's around to see me do it, she'll have to cool down a few degrees too.'_

Decision made, Ranma banked in a wide, sweeping turn. He'd been more or less following the path of the storm, probably out of a subconscious desire to gloat at all the irritating weather that wasn't getting a chance to dump on him, and was well away from Nerima by now. Passage back to the ward was quick and peaceful, although the various concerns on his mind were a little too weighty to really enjoy the flight.

One thing he did enjoy, though, was the sight that greeted him as he passed through the streets a quarter mile away from the Tendo home: Kasumi and Akane moving through the newly rain-washed streets, obviously heading for the market on a shopping trip.

Satisfied that the coast back home was clear, Ranma poured on the speed. He soared down over the Tendo boundary wall, ironically enough at the exact same section that Ryoga hadn't smashed his way through, zipped into the dojo, made use of the hot water and clothes stashed there (and also made a mental note that there were now two sets of clothing he needed to retrieve from the wilds of greater Nerima), and hurried to his room. "Ryoga can have the bar I already opened," he decided as he moved to the floorboard where he'd stashed the prize. "It ain't like he didn't already get more than his fair share of the first bar—WHAT THE HELL?!"

The floorboard fell from his nerveless fingers. Ranma stared down into the cavity beneath it, searching desperately, fruitlessly. In sharp contrast to the conditions of yesterday morning, when he'd last checked, there was no trace of any soap at all. Neither waterproof or mundane, previously-used or pristine. For a second, Ranma hoped against hope that he'd just pulled up the wrong floorboard, but then his eyes caught sight of something else.

The only thing resting in the hiding place was a single white duck's feather.

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Author's Notes

Shakespearean snippets from Love's Labour's Lost, courtesy of the website for famous quotations. There is also a paraphrased quote from Jonathan Livingston Seagull in this chapter.

Two ideas in this chapter are ones I vaguely remember reading in other fanfics. The first is Nabiki musing with horror on the Xi Fang Gao, with that being presented as the sort of thing she would fear most. The second is the thought of Nabiki stealing back Ranma-chan photos from Kuno and selling them to him again. Don't remember which stories these came from, though.

One thing that puzzles me a little is how seldom fanfics take into account what is really a pretty significant facet of Akane's character. I am of course talking about her submissive streak. The anime shows clearly that when facing a guy who's forceful enough, all her supposed fire and independence fade silently away. My personal theory is that this is due to her father and the poor example of manhood he provided as she grew up.

Her fans ignore this aspect of Akane completely, in my experience; most of them exalt her as a paragon of female strength and power. Which is a load of garbage, at least in the anime. Maybe the manga is different, I don't know. But if you want an example of a strong, independent girl, you're far better off looking for it in Shampoo or Nabiki, or even Kodachi. Ukyo might be a possible choice as well, although the Ukyo's Skirt and Ukyo's Secret Sauce episodes muddy the waters. She's strong in some ways, but her confidence in herself as a woman doesn't seem to me to match her confidence and strength in other things.

Akane, however, is quite clearly not the icon of liberated women that so many seem to think. Of course, flawed characters are more interesting than ones without failings, and those very problems are fertile ground for further development and new stories of growth and loss.

Expect more of both those things in the chapters to come, and I'm certainly not just talking about Akane when I say that. Thanks to everyone at the Refuge who gave C&C.


	3. A Season of Storms, part 2

Dream of the Earthbound

A Ranma ½ fanfic by Aondehafka

Disclaimer: the Ranmaverse characters owned by Rumiko Takahashi, and all that obligatory stuff. This story based on the anime, not the manga.

Note: dialogue enclosed -like so- indicates spoken Mandarin.  And I wish this site would put back the ability to use special characters into QuickEdit.

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Chapter 3: A Season of Storms, Part 2

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The Matriarch watched impassively through the window of the terminal, tracking the progress of the white-robed figure across the tarmac. She concentrated, focusing her chi senses sharply enough to pierce all barriers between them. He passed from her sight into the airplane, but Cologne didn't allow herself to relax. She focused all the more sharply, tracking Mousse's position by his aura, making sure that he didn't decide at the last minute to conveniently delay following her order. Although not with her ears, she heard the click of his seatbelt as it fastened, along with the faint disheartened sigh that he gave a moment later.

Cologne maintained her watch, allowing herself to relax only once the plane was finally airborne. She closed her eyes and bowed her head, reflecting on one of the more sobering truths she'd learned in her three hundred years: one sure way to lose everything was to be unwilling to sacrifice anything.

Opening her eyes once more and putting such gloomy thoughts behind her, the Matriarch left the terminal and took to the rooftops, bouncing back toward the Cat Café at a leisurely pace. It would be better to give Shampoo some time alone, to see how well she adapted on her own to the training exercise her great-grandmother had left her with. Cologne had deliberately skipped almost all of the starting details that she ought to have shared with Shampoo, and conventional wisdom stated that her great-granddaughter could only be failing miserable at the task. However, Cologne privately had a suspicion that her great-granddaughter's experiences in her new cursed form might make up for the lack of proper instruction.

The only way to know for sure, of course, was to see how far Shampoo would get on her own. Accordingly, Cologne stopped on a high-rise rooftop only a mile from the airport, settled herself down, pulled out her pipe, and enjoyed a long, pleasant interval of relaxation. This also gave her a chance to recover the chi she'd expended in tracking Mousse so closely, no small task when they were separated by that much distance and that many solid obstacles.

Eventually, when she estimated that Shampoo would have been working on the training exercise for at least an hour, Cologne got to her feet once more and prepared to resume her journey home. She paused, considering something. "If Shampoo has succeeded, she'll be in a good mood, open and receptive. And if she has failed, she'll be frustrated and should appreciate something to increase her motivation," Cologne mused. In either case it would be good to show her the ultimate fruit that would be borne from her training efforts.

"On the other hand, that technique is anything but subtle. Do I really want to make such a spectacle out of myself, give everyone a glimpse of what I can really do?" The Matriarch pondered that question for several more minutes. Eventually she decided that such a glimpse would more likely work in her favor than not. If Ranma learned of it, he might well be impressed, but that ought to be all. Depending on how it was employed, the Chariot of the Storm technique could be more terrible than anything her son-in-law had yet experienced, but simply using it as she had in mind shouldn't do more than inspire him in the same way she intended for Shampoo.

Conveniently enough, she was already on the tallest building in the immediate vicinity. Cologne gave a great leap, soaring nearly five stories higher into the air. As she slowed, approaching the point where gravity would overcome her jump, she aligned her aura, infused her staff with chi, and began spinning the weapon. In a matter of seconds, the air around her went from calmness to a maelstrom of roaring power, a thirty-foot tornado tightly centered around the Matriarch, and as tightly controlled. Cologne guided the vortex several hundred feet higher into the air, then set off for home with a smile on her face. Unlike the last time she'd used this technique, there were no panicked redheads grabbing her in terribly inappropriate places to disrupt her concentration.

As she approached the Cat Café, the smile dropped from her lips. Shampoo was nowhere to be seen, though Cologne's sharp-eyed gaze did spot the bag of balsa wood strips lying abandoned and forgotten next to the restaurant. Dropping her technique, the Matriarch descended to a perfect one-point landing on the roof, directly above the room she shared with Shampoo. With her senses no longer surrounded by the swirling, chi-laden winds, she was able to sense her great-granddaughter's presence directly below her—and make out the faint sound of sobs.

Another descent brought her to the front door. She opened it, passed through, and closed it behind her, deliberately making enough noise to warn Shampoo of her arrival. Continuing up the stairs and into the bedroom, she found Shampoo waiting for her. The girl's tears were now under control, but she was making no effort to hide her misery.

There were times Cologne hated the shortness of stature age had wreaked upon her. This was one of them. She would have given much to be able to hug her youngest descendent and offer her the kind of comfort she needed, but all she could do was shuffle over and lay a gentle hand on Shampoo's arm. "-What has happened, Great-Granddaughter?-" she asked in as kindly a tone as she could manage, her use of Mandarin an indication that for this conversation Shampoo need not try to express herself in Japanese.

"-It's R- Ranma,-" Shampoo replied. "-I, I just... he...-" She stopped, closed her eyes tightly. A few more tears squeezed out. "-I love him so much, Great-Grandmother. But it, it seems like it doesn't even matter to him... I don't matter to him at all...-"

"-That isn't true,-" Cologne replied, lightly rubbing her hand along her youngest descendant's arm, subtly infusing the gesture with one of the few varieties of emotion-based chi the Matriarch ever allowed herself to use.

"-Then why does he treat me like this?!-" Shampoo demanded. She could feel a deep sense of compassion and care radiating from her great-grandmother, but it wasn't enough to displace her sadness and pain. "-I've done so much for him, given up so much for him. I was even breaking the law again for him, or at least I would have been if you hadn't changed it! And now this... n- now this... I did what he asked, and he just changes the rules again and yells at me... H- he still doesn't trust me at all...-"

"-What did he yell at you for, Shampoo?-"

The young Amazon took a deep breath. "-On Friday, Ranma came to me and asked me if I had any of the Falcon water left. When I told him I did, he wanted me to use it on Ryoga.-"

Cologne's eyes widened in pained understanding, and spared one instant to wish Shampoo's command of Japanese were better. No doubt she really had thought that was what her Airen meant. "-And that is why you wanted the next day off?-"

"-Yes. I found Ryoga, told him about the water, and when he turned it down I splashed him anyway.-" Shampoo closed her eyes and hung her head. "-And for that I get my husband yelling at me and accusing me that I would have done the same thing to him if he'd said he didn't want his gift,-" she whispered.

The Matriarch sighed. "-Child, I find it hard to believe that Ranma would directly ask you to curse Ryoga. Offer him the choice, yes. I can even see Ranma challenging him and beating him senseless as motivation to accept it. But not asking you to go directly to that extreme.-"

Shampoo's gaze locked with Cologne's. "When talking about Ryoga, him exact words was, 'It needs to stop! You want share something special with me, Shampoo? Then fix that for me! You give me gift like that, I'll be grateful for the rest of my life!' "

Cologne blinked, finding herself momentarily at a loss for words. Shampoo continued, "-He was talking about his honor, and how Ryoga abused it. It is true that when he first asked me, he said he wanted to offer the water to Ryoga. But I didn't just say yes to that, we talked more, he acted like it really was a big deal to him what was happening. He used those words and that was what I said yes to.-" She closed her eyes once more. "-And now he's just pretending all he ever meant was offer it to Ryoga. Maybe he just wants to blame everything on me so stupid Akane and Ryoga don't cause so much trouble for him. Maybe that's all I am to him, a girl who's stupid enough to let him use her for nothing...-"

"-That's not true, Shampoo.-" Best to derail this train of thought as quickly as possible. If Shampoo ever really did fall out of love with Ranma, things could get very ugly very quickly. "-And you should be ashamed of yourself, forgetting so easily that you're the one Ranma faced his worst fear to save.-" As Shampoo raised her head and gave her a teary-eyed questioning look, Cologne continued, "-That damnable Ghost Cat, or have you forgotten?-"

"Shampoo did forget," the Amazon murmured. "-But, does that really...?-" she let the question trail off uncompleted.

"-It is enough for now,-" Cologne said with iron-hard certainty. "-And if it weren't, there's that business with the Reversal Jewel as well.-" She fell silent for a few minutes, pondering her own course while allowing Shampoo time to process this. When she felt enough time had passed, she continued, "-You talked earlier about the many things you've given him, Great-Granddaughter. And certainly you have sacrificed much for him, far more than anyone else. But there are still two things you need to give.-"

Shampoo actually found the backbone to glare at her elder. "-And what would they be?-" she asked, her tone making it very clear how far she was from convinced of this truth.

"-Understanding and time,-" Cologne returned, unphased by this response. As Shampoo's defiance melted into confusion, Cologne continued the verbal offensive. "-You need to understand the effects his life has had on him. To know what his faults really are, and what he really means by what he says. The two meetings you had with him this morning and two days ago are a perfect example of that.-"

"-Well, I _don't_ understand,-" Shampoo confessed. "-What are you trying to say?-"

"-You said yourself that Ranma's first request was for you to offer the water to Ryoga. That is how he would have been thinking of it afterward.-"

"-But—!-" With some difficulty, Shampoo cut her protest short as Cologne held up her palm.

"-Child, you are not the one at fault here. Ranma is. Those words of his that you quoted to me are proof enough of that.-" At least as long as Shampoo had gotten the quote right. Cologne hoped for both their sakes that she had; the Matriarch personally would not have thought Ranma would be willing to go to such an extreme so quickly. "-You say he said them in the heat of emotion, to persuade you to do what he'd asked. That shows how he really feels, and it means just what you took it to mean. Ranma wanted his rival's old cursed form gone, with or without his permission. But it is easier for your husband to feel good about himself if he thinks he just meant for you to make the offer.-"

"-So he _is_ using me as a scapegoat?-" Shampoo asked indignantly.

"-Not deliberately, I'd wager. Give him time to face up to himself,-" Cologne replied. "-It's not easy to swallow an unpleasant truth just like that. And it's not easy to make big changes either, or to get used to them after they've been made. That is why I said you needed to give him understanding and time.-"

"-...Okay,-" Shampoo said after a long pause. "-I didn't do anything wrong, but I still have to wait for Ranma to admit that to himself.-" She sighed. "-Well, it's not like I don't have practice waiting for him.-"

Cologne narrowed her eyes. "-I didn't say that, Great-Granddaughter. You most certainly did do something wrong.-"

Shampoo blinked, then gulped against a sudden rising feeling of dread. "-What do you mean, Honored Elder?-"

"-Oh, suddenly it's 'Honored Elder'?-" Cologne remarked dryly. "-I wasn't talking about official Amazon business, Shampoo, but let me just touch on that anyway. I and my fellow Elders revised the law to allow Amazons to use Jusenkyo on themselves, with a few restrictions on which springs were acceptable. But with open access to the Cursed Springs, we had to address the issue of using cursed water on someone else.-" She paused for a moment, regarding her sweating descendent. "-Had you cursed _anyone_ other than Ryoga Hibiki against his or her will, you would be liable for serious punishment under the amended law. Much worse than it used to be.-"

"-W-what? Why Ryoga?-"

"-Because he was using his old curse to take sexual advantage of a woman, even if she didn't know. As Akane Tendo is no member of the Joketsuzoku, we are not obligated to defend her, but there are those on the Council who would have done so anyway. If it had been one of them here in Nerima in my stead, Ryoga would long since have been put him to death, or his lie exposed to Miss Tendo's dubious mercies.-" Cologne paused for a moment, pinning her youngest descendent with her most intense stare. "-Neither of those was a suggestion, by the way.-"

"-I didn't think they were,-" Shampoo assured her great-grandmother.

"-In any case, your cursing of Ryoga slips nicely through one of the exceptions in the amended law. But his was the only such situation I'm aware of in Japan, so don't get any bright ideas about a repeat performance.-"

Shampoo shrugged. "-I dumped all the rest of the water on him anyway.-" Then, thinking back to a little earlier in the conversation, she asked, "-Did you say there was something else I did wrong?-"

"-Yes, I did,-" Cologne stated flatly. "-It's a question of responsibility and of pride. And again, the fault is as much Ranma's as yours. It's certainly understandable that he would want to end Ryoga's slight against his honor.-" Although the more she thought about it, the more it bothered her that he had been so quick to jump to the extreme of forcing Ryoga to take the new curse. Cologne had long been of the opinion that Ranma's life was too stressful for him to bear forever, but she had always kept a fairly close eye on the situation and she had believed he still had quite a large amount of tolerance left. The water would certainly have retained its power for another ten weeks; surely that was enough time to at least try convincing Ryoga to accept it of his own free will. That Ranma hadn't even felt it worth bothering with such a course was unpleasant news, and could mean that he was far closer to some sort of breaking point than Cologne had budgeted for.

Pushing those thoughts aside to be dealt with later, she returned to the issue at hand. "-However, even though Ranma did ask you to 'fix it', that was not what you should have done. The responsibility was his, and the water had been your gift to him anyway. You should have given it to him to use.-"

"-What?! Are you crazy?!-" Shampoo burst out. "-Let him take the Falcon water back to the Tendo Lunatic House?! It would've been splashed over Akane within half an hour! No way was I going to have that happen!-"

Cologne blinked, realizing with some chagrin that her great-granddaughter had raised a very valid point. That was just the sort of thing that always happened, wasn't it? "-Ah... let me correct myself. You should have gone along with Ranma to talk to Ryoga, but it should have been him doing the talking. And him deciding how to respond when Ryoga refused.-"

Shampoo gave the Matriarch a hooded stare. "Great-Grandmother so much wiser and more smart than Shampoo, much much more experience. If her first idea was wrong one, why she get onto Shampoo if Shampoo's was too?"

The ancient Amazon lightly swatted her descendant's head. "-Saying it in that too-too cute dialect doesn't make it any less disrespectful, Great-Granddaughter. But I suppose you have a point.-"

Rubbing her head even though it didn't really hurt, Shampoo gave a nod of acknowledgement. "Thank you for cheer me up, Great-Grandmother. I go train more now, yes?"

"Certainly." Cologne hesitated, wondering whether she should accompany her great-granddaughter and watch the performance, or whether it would be better to slip by the Tendo home and perhaps get a better idea of Ranma's current mood. "I just wish I knew why he was in such a hurry," she murmured to herself.

"What you say?" Shampoo asked. She had been thinking about the training, or more specifically, Ranma training alongside her after he came back and apologized for snapping at her and blaming her unfairly. As a result she'd only caught the fact that Cologne had spoken; that the Matriarch hadn't been addressing her was a fact she'd missed.

"It's nothing, Child. I was just a little concerned over Son-in-law. Wondering why he wouldn't give Ryoga more of a chance to walk away from his mistakes on his own." Cologne fired off another piercing stare. "Are you sure about what you told me? You said that Ranma showed strong emotion at the way Ryoga was acting dishonorably, and that he asked you to fix it. Is there anything else you aren't bothering to mention? Something that would explain why he would be so quick to act?"

Shampoo blinked in clear incomprehension. "Why he need more? Ryoga hurt his honor, why he need more reason than that to end it right away?"

Cologne sighed, and once again thanked the ancestors that she had a far better heir to the Matriarchy than Shampoo back in the village. Her youngest descendent was almost as bad as Ranma himself in thinking abstract things through. "Because he's borne it this long without snapping Ryoga's neck?" she asked with a mixture of patience and sarcasm. "Because there are debts he owes to Ryoga as well? Because he did first say he wanted you to offer this to Ryoga? It would be different if what he meant was for you to convince Ryoga to accept the gift. Or even if he meant to do the convincing himself if Ryoga turned you down. I would have expected Son-in-law to be willing to take at least a few weeks to try to work through Ryoga's stubborn foolishness, rather than deciding at the beginning that his decision didn't matter. Are you sure of what you've related to me, Shampoo?" She stopped there, taking a good look at her descendent. Shampoo was nervous. Very nervous. Nor was she trying to hide it.

"Um... well... Honored Elder... " Shampoo gulped, and switched to Mandarin. "-What if he thought there wasn't much time?-"

"-Explain.-"

The clipped tone of Cologne's command did nothing to settle Shampoo's nerves. "-I... When I first offered him the water, I told him how it would run out of power eventually... but I made it sound like it would happen in only a few more days.-"

"-What?!-" Cologne snarled, her fingers tightening around her staff until the wood flexed. "-Why on earth did you do such a foolish thing, Shampoo?!-"

"-Because of what you said!-" Shampoo wailed. "-Said not to use guilt on him. So how could I tell him I was going to get in trouble for giving this gift to him? How could I tell him the 'one or two days' thing was because that's how much longer I thought I might be able to keep it a secret from you...-"

All the tension drained out of the Matriarch at those words. Her grip on the staff relaxed and her shoulders slumped. She stood like that in silence for quite a while.

"-Great-Grandmother?-" Shampoo eventually ventured to ask.

"-Sometimes I wonder if the very gods fight against us,-" Cologne said quietly. "-Certainly fate has favored Miss Tendo time and time again. I wonder if her departed ancestors traded all their wisdom for power, in order to so strongly support her when a match between her and Son-in-law would ultimately be so bad for them both.-"

"W- what you say?" Shampoo whispered.

"-An Amazon never surrenders,-" Cologne declared, still more to herself than anything else. In the past she'd always dismissed these coincidences as just more random fluctuations of the general chaos of Nerima. But Shampoo's aunt, the aforementioned heir to the Matriarchy, was a fully-fledged mage, and she could certainly determine whether the lines of chance and fate themselves were struggling to cast down all of Ranma's other suitors and promote Akane Tendo. And if they were, Cologne wouldn't hesitate to invoke her own supernatural countermeasures.

But that was a matter for another time. "-Shampoo, forgive me for my failure,-" the Matriarch said with a sigh. "-I should have told you from the beginning about the change to the law. Instead I allowed you to think you were making a true sacrifice for your Airen, and gave you the good news afterward. It seems to have been a mistake.-"

"-I wondered about that,-" Shampoo confessed. "-Why you didn't just tell me from the start.-"

"-It is because of what you believed. You honestly thought it would cost you a lot to give that gift to him, and that belief made the act more meaningful. Not as much as if the sacrifice had been real, but I thought it was still worth doing. And because of that, it seems your husband believed it wasn't an option to take the time to convince Ryoga to make the choice of his own free will.

"-I could be wrong here, Great-Granddaughter. I will admit that freely. But if Ranma believed there was only that little time, if the water had to be used on Ryoga immediately or not at all, then I can see him deciding it was better to take the chance than lose it. But when he learns otherwise...-"

It still didn't make complete sense to Shampoo. After everything Ranma had said about his honor, and how Ryoga was abusing it, would it really make such a big difference to him? Did her Airen truly feel that Ryoga deserved that much of a chance, time to make the decision for himself as long as that delay didn't destroy the possibility for the future? Weeks or months in which the Lost Boy could continue sneaking into Akane's bed? Was her husband really that forgiving?

_'-He hasn't killed or crippled Mousse or Stupid Stick Boy yet even after all they've done, and he doesn't owe either of them anything,-' _Shampoo thought with a sudden surge of cold fear. _'-Maybe... maybe he really is that generous...-'_

Swallowing, she took a deep breath, then asked, "Great-Grandmother... what should I do?"

-----------------------

The front door slammed. He didn't really notice.

Running steps shook the stairs in an approaching crescendo. He paid them no heed.

The door behind him whipped open so quickly it blurred. He didn't look around.

Even as Akane stormed across the room toward him, Ranma continued to stare down into the gap beneath the floor. The sound of his fiancée's voice washed around him like so much air, no more meaningful than the whistling of the wind. He didn't respond in any way—at least, not until Akane grabbed his shoulder and whirled him around to face her.

Then, at least, the glaze began to fade from his eyes.

"You're not even _listening_ to me!" Akane yelled, her face flushed an alarming shade of red. She'd only just seen him out of the corner of her eye as she walked along with Kasumi, hadn't even been sure it was her transformed fiancé streaking toward the Tendo home. But she had been in no mood to risk missing her chance to catch him, and so she had abandoned Kasumi without hesitation, cutting her sister off mid-sentence without a trace of reluctance and racing back home. After all that, there was no way she was going to let Ranma just sit there and stare stupidly up at her.

"What?" Ranma finally managed, his tone sounding unpleasantly like a growl to Akane. She swelled further in indignation and righteous anger. If he thought he was going to make her fold as easily as last night, he had a very painful lesson coming!

"What do you mean, 'what'?! This is all your fault, Ranma! I told you this was all just another scheme of Shampoo's. But no, you didn't believe me, did you? You never listen at all when somebody tries to show you just how wrong you are! If you hadn't gone along with this in the first place, poor Ryoga would be just fine right now!"

"What? Akane, that doesn't make any sense at all," he protested, finally standing up to face her directly.

"Of course it makes sense! You did just what Shampoo wanted, that was her plan's first step. And once it worked she went on to the next one, cursing poor Ryoga like that! And all you care about is what you told me yesterday, that this curse is 'the best thing anyone's done for you in a long time'. Well, how about Ryoga, you jerk?!" Akane demanded, tears of anger and pain gathering in the corners of her eyes. "Was it worth it to give him a horrible curse like that, just so you could fly the friendly skies with Shampoo?! And even if you don't care about that, who do you think she'll pull it on next? Kuno, maybe? What about Ukyo?! Or maybe even ME?!"

"Yeah, right," Ranma retorted disgustedly. "Geez, you don't understand anything at all." The force with which he spoke those words only made the youngest Tendo angrier. Before she could say anything in return, he continued, "Y'know, it only makes you sound dumber each time you call this a 'horrible curse'. I've told you over and over again that it's a good thing. That's why Shampoo gave it to me. And the last time I talked to her, she made it real clear that she wanted this to be something special for her an' me to share. Offering it to you or Ucchan is the last thing she's gonna do."

"So you are still sneaking around with her behind my back," Akane said with a sort of frozen calm.

"Give it a rest, would ya?" Despite the relatively mild words, Ranma's tone and expression were anything but meek or plaintive. "Where I go or who I spend time with ain't things you get to dictate, Akane. You might as well accept that now, because it's sure as hell the truth."

"Oh, I guess you'd rather go hang out with Shampoo, maybe take her on a nice date, thank her for what she did," Akane retorted bitterly. She could feel something darker and more painful gnawing away dangerously quickly at the core of the anger sustaining her. It just wasn't fair! Ranma was wrong here, he was the one at fault and he didn't even care! Didn't care about Ryoga, didn't care about her, all he cared about was himself... and Shampoo...

Ranma winced at the reminder of the sort of things he was going to need to say to Shampoo at their next meeting, but quickly pushed those thoughts aside. "I sure am going to need to see her again pretty soon," he said—defiantly, angrily, disgustedly, bitterly. "Check this out." He skipped backward and to the side, gesturing down into the now-obvious gap in the flooring.

_'Check what out, that he's now damaging our home even when there's not somebody else to fight with?'_ Nevertheless, Akane did as instructed, leaning forward and looking down into the empty gap. "What?"

"It's where I _was_ keepin' the soap Shampoo gave me," he growled. "Don't see any of that now, do ya?" His hand jabbed down into the space, then retracted with a delicate white feather clenched between two fingers. "THIS was the only thing there."

It took her several heartbeats to process the information—but when she did, it was like hitting a brick wall, the confusion she'd been feeling amplified a paralyzing thousandfold. The soap was gone? The very thing she'd come here to demand he share with Ryoga? The... the only thing that had saved him from Mousse's earlier trap...

Akane sat there gaping at the feather, her mouth opening and closing feebly, the color slowly draining from her cheeks. Ranma, watching the reaction, felt at least a little of his own stress drain away. Good to know the tomboy could still get concerned for him if it was something big enough.

"He... he did... Mousse did?" she breathed. Inside her, all her emotions tumbled and swirled in a senseless chaotic vortex. In this moment Akane didn't know what to think or how to feel. She'd experienced nothing but pain in the aftermath of the earlier 'battle' with Mousse, pain at how effortlessly Ranma's alliance with Shampoo had brought him the victory. But with the soap gone, what would happen if the half-blind boy tried that very same tactic again?

Her emotions were still cascading around and around one another, but they seemed to be slowing and solidifying as well. She could almost put a name to some of what she was feeling, could almost understand some of the directions her heart was being tugged... and then, in a moment of greater clarity than Akane often managed, she recognized one emotion and grabbed it with all her strength.

Despite himself Ranma took a flinching step backward as pure fear filled Akane's eyes. But then the misunderstanding vanished as quickly as it had arrived. Later he would wonder just why he'd jumped to the conclusion that she was afraid of him; he'd seen this several times before, and they were some of his better memories. Akane was afraid, all right... but the fear was for his sake. Concern for him, especially such strong concern, was much better than getting hammered, mistrusted, or put down in favor of some other guy.

The girl in question gulped, then said, "You're right, Ranma. You do need to talk to her again for that. Even..." she swallowed again, gathering her strength, then admitted, "even if she makes you take her on a date for more soap, it would be worth it." A slight measure of fire returned to her eyes as she made her next statement. "But you better not just offer right away! That's no way to negotiate. Try and make her see it as something she owes you, because it was Mousse who did this."

"You ain't got to tell me anything about putting the blame on Mousse," Ranma said quietly.

-----------------------

_'I hope it's not too early.'_

The morning dew glistened on windowpanes as Ranma passed through the streets of Nerima. Furinkan's gate wouldn't even be unlocked yet, he knew, and the first bell wouldn't sound for more than two hours. Around him, the noise of the city was still muted, and the streets were all but empty of fellow pedestrians. Those that were present reminded him somewhat of Nabiki right after she awoke; they might have to be up at this hour of morning to attend to whatever their affairs were, but they didn't like it. Ranma could sympathize. Long years of early morning practices with his father meant that he could start his day this early with no real trouble, but he still preferred not to. Just like the vast majority of everyone else.

But he hadn't been thinking about the time of day.

_'It hasn't even been a whole day yet. Sure, Shampoo's had time to sleep on it, but is this really enough time for her to get over the worst of it?'_ Ranma grimaced involuntarily, recalling the accusations he'd leveled against her and the strength of her response. _'Still can't believe I blew it like that. She probably still is pretty ticked.'_ He just hoped the Amazon's ire had faded sufficiently that his apology would restore her to her usual cheerful, happy, eager-to-please self.

_'Damn Mousse anyway,' _he thought bitterly. _'If it weren't for him, all I'd have to worry about now would be apologizing. That's bad enough, but how's it gonna sound when right after I get through with that I wind up asking her for more soap?'_ Ranma knew he wasn't the most sensitive guy around, and his only real skill with words was as another weapon in battle. When he tried to use them for other, softer applications, more often than not it seemed like his few successes had happened in spite of himself.

He kept trying to push one particular set of memories out his mind: the long-ago 'date' with Shampoo for what had turned out to be a packet of Instant Nannichuan. Several times through that outing he'd told the Amazon what she wanted to hear, and had honestly believed he'd tricked her—and each time he'd been completely wrong. Shampoo had proven much less gullible than he'd given her credit for. _'Wouldn't it be just my luck now, if she thought I was only going through with this because I wanted to get more soap out of her,' _Ranma thought glumly. If even he could see that it looked suspicious for him to come up with the apology and follow hard on its heels with the news of his need for something else, something only she could give him, he supposed it would take a minor miracle for her not to make a similar connection. Shampoo was a lot better than some people about not jumping to negative conclusions about him, but he knew very well that there were limits.

_'It'd be a lot better if I just apologized this morning and waited a few days to tell her about the soap. But that ain't an option,' _he reminded himself. _'This isn't just about me. Ryoga needs his own share of soap.'_ The Lost Boy had lived up to his name, had already been long gone by the time Ranma had gotten back to the Tendo home yesterday, but in a situation like this Ranma suspected Ryoga could resurface at any time. And when he did, Ranma wanted to be able to make his peace offering right then and there._ 'If it weren't for that, I could just tell Shampoo I'm sorry and leave everything else until later. That way at least she'd know I meant it.'_

He walked in silence for a few minutes, pondering this, feeling like there was some logical extension of the thought that he needed to make, some connection he just wasn't quite getting. Eventually it came to him. _'Hang on... she never actually said she didn't leave Ryoga any soap.'_ Not that Ranma had any real uncertainty regarding this point, but that didn't mean he couldn't ask anyway. _'I can just tell her what Mousse did, and then ask her if she actually did give Ryoga any. When she says no, I can ask her to pass along at least one bar to him. She'll ask me too, I'm sure, and maybe she'll be a bit suspicious, but if I tell her I don't want any right now, that I'm gonna try getting by without it, that should be enough to set her mind at ease. She won't think I'm just going there to get something out of her with an apology I don't really mean.'_

Ranma considered this new plan as he covered the next several blocks' distance, looking for downsides. _'Hmmm. If I do it like that, starting out asking her if she gave Ryoga any soap, she might think I was thinking about stealing some from him.'_ He considered this. _'Eh, I could live with that kind of misunderstanding.'_

The fact that he'd be sacrificing his own chance at protection for awhile required more thought. The more he considered it, though, the better he felt about it. Going without the soap for a few days or a week or even longer didn't ultimately seem like that big a hardship. Mousse had certainly showed he viewed the Falcon curse as just another exploitable opening, and considering how far he was willing to go in his quest to end Ranma's 'threat' to Shampoo that could mean a real danger someday. But Duck-boy was out of the country for who knew how long. Ryoga might make a nuisance of himself, but when the rubber met the road Ranma trusted him not to really see his rival's new curse as a chance to make good on his frequent cries of "Ranma, prepare to die!" The Lost Bird might possibly trigger Ranma's curse in the middle of combat and proclaim himself the winner of the fight, but that was as far as Ranma believed he would go. And there was apparently some unwritten law that said Ranma Saotome would never be splashed when within the direct line of sight of a Kuno, so that was one more threat marginalized.

_'Really that soap doesn't matter all that much to me, when you get right down to it,' _he thought with a mingled sense of surprise and gratification. It certainly hadn't felt that way yesterday when he'd stared down into the empty hole, but now that he was thinking about it things didn't seem nearly as bad anymore. _'I mean, what good would having a whole crateload of the stuff do me? Sure, then I could take a bath with the stuff every day and maybe go half a year without changing.'_ He snorted loud enough to draw a couple of stares from random passersby. _'Yeah, right. Go that long stuck here on the ground, without stretching my wings? Not a chance._

_'So if that's out, all the stuff is really good for is protecting me from specific things. Like with Mousse. It was real handy then, but the deal was I knew I needed to be prepared. And fights like that are actually pretty rare.'_ If you excluded the missives sent by Ryoga, which after all were useless in telling him what time the battle would really take place, Ranma could count the number of challenge letters he'd received in Nerima on his fingers. The kind of situations in which he'd have enough warning to actually use the waterproof soap ahead of time were rare enough that it should be no problem at all to hold off on asking Shampoo if she could provide him with more.

In significantly higher spirits now, he covered the rest of the distance to the Cat Café rather more quickly. One good thing about Shampoo being an Amazon—he knew she would already be awake at this hour, getting in some early morning training before the restaurant opened its doors. _'Maybe I'll even get a chance to ask her about that weird routine she was doing yesterday.'_

However, as he rounded the final corner and caught sight of Shampoo, he saw she was engaged in a more normal training exercise. The lavender-haired girl glided slowly and gracefully along, her body moving through a form that looked like it might be a distant cousin of Tai Chi. Those kata were intended to teach patience, control, and harmony with oneself, or so he'd always understood. They weren't something he or Genma had ever found particularly appealing.

He was still too far away to make out many details of the Amazon's expression. He could see her eyes were closed, but that was the biggest thing he could say for certain. She didn't look particularly happy, but he couldn't say whether the mask she wore was of concentration, or just subdued unhappiness remaining from yesterday. _'Well, if that's what it is, she oughta be glad to hear what I've got to say.'_

Ranma trotted over to the mouth of the alleyway in which Shampoo was conducting her practice. He paused for a few moments, wondering how easily she could sense his presence. After several seconds ticked by and Shampoo remained unaware, he cleared his throat loudly, then followed up with a more subdued, "Hey, Shampoo."

The Amazon stumbled to a halt, whirling around to face him, her eyes opening wide. In that one unguarded moment Ranma saw surprise and a flicker of something else, and then her expression closed again. He wasn't quite sure what he'd seen, but it hadn't seemed very happy or welcoming. _'But that really isn't a surprise, is it,' _he reminded himself. _'She needs to hear what you need to tell her before she'll be all smiles again.'_

"You're... uh, you're probably kinda surprised to see me this early in the morning," Ranma said awkwardly. "Ah... can we talk?"

"Yes, Ranma. Shampoo need talk to you," the Amazon murmured.

"Okay, yeah, same here." He turned and jumped, landing lightly on the roof of the Cat Café. Even as Shampoo touched down a few feet away, he turned and seated himself on the edge, legs dangling over the side. It felt less awkward to sit than stand, and in a situation like this he could use every bit of reduced awkwardness he could get. As Shampoo followed his example, he twisted to face her, noting that her expression seemed even more closed than before. Taking a deep breath and screwing his courage to the sticking place, he blurted out, "I'm sorry."

She blinked, met his gaze for a few seconds longer, then dropped her eyes. Truth be told, he'd hoped for a more effusive response than that, but Ranma hadn't really expected it. He'd known he was going to have to go into a bit more detail than just those two words. "You were right. I did tell you how much it bothered me what Ryoga was doing, and I did ask you to fix it." He sighed, using the moment to buy time while he searched for the right words. "You did... what you did... because I asked it. There's no way in hell I shoulda jumped on you afterward or thought it might have meant you'd've cursed me against my own will. It was stupid and... and I'm sorry."

"So you believe in Shampoo now?" The Amazon didn't look up, nor had the look on her face brightened at all. A more adept listener than Ranma would have clearly heard a note of real pain in the question. Ranma himself wasn't so perceptive, but nonetheless his sense of foreboding grew.

"Y- yeah." He fell silent, searching for more words, trying to figure out what was wrong here and how to fix it. Somehow, this really didn't seem like the right point to introduce the 'need for more soap' motif, even if just for Ryoga and not himself.

Shampoo still wasn't looking at him. The Amazon took a deep breath, then said, "Ranma... Shampoo m- make mistake."

"Mistake?" he repeated, thinking back to the last thing she'd said to him yesterday, hoping she didn't mean what he suspected she did, wondering why the thought was causing such a cold ache. Sure, Shampoo had declared that maybe she shouldn't have given even Ranma himself this new curse, but it wasn't like she could undo it now that it was done. Why should this thought hurt?

"Y- yes. Was mistake. Shampoo tell you water would lose real power in few more days," the Amazon said, ending his misinterpretation. "Would actually have taken few more months before that happen." And with this, she steeled her soul, lifted her head, and made eye contact with him once more.

She'd expected to see anger or some equally negative emotion. The utter absence of that was so reassuring that what she actually was seeing didn't even register at first.

"You mean..." Ranma's voice trailed off, as his confusion rose ever higher. Now, all of a sudden, Shampoo was looking so much happier? Why?

After a few moments of silent wondering, he pushed it aside for now, returning to the question he'd started to ask. "You mean you didn't know how long it would really last? Getting that wrong was your mistake?" His confusion only grew higher as this innocent question caused all of Shampoo's newly-regained happiness to transform to shock. Why would she... hang on...

Shampoo wasn't sure she was even breathing. Her pulse hammered in her ears. _'-That's what he thought I meant? I never thought of... I could... I could..._

_'-No, I can't.-'_ Closing her eyes once more, she answered, in a voice not far above a whisper, "No. Shampoo knew whole time water would really last that long. But no—" She stopped, sensing the sudden change in her companion's position.

Forcing her eyes open once more took a serious effort. When she did, she was rewarded with the sight of Ranma, standing, facing away from her. Tension was plainly evident in his posture and the tightly-clenched muscles of his arms, neck, and back. The silence stretched and stretched, Ranma holding voiceless and motionless, Shampoo finding no breath to continue with the explanation she desperately wanted to give, the explanation Cologne had warned her he'd probably not be ready to hear in the heat of the moment.

Ranma himself wasn't really aware of his surroundings just now. The message he'd just received hurtled round and round through his mind like a brick swung on a string, smashing through the pre-established constructions and leaving only messy ruin in its wake. Everything he'd believed... all the careful thought he'd worked his way through... the conclusions he'd so painstakingly reached... damn it all, what good was any of this? Why did something like this always have to happen, every single time it looked like things might finally be starting to look up in his life...

Eventually, the tension in her Airen's posture eased away. Shampoo firmly quashed the hope that tried to flutter to life, which was just as well for her. When Ranma turned around, there was no real sign of anger present in his eyes or his voice, but that didn't come as any kind of good news. Frankly, Shampoo would rather have had at least some anger than seeing her beloved look so cold, tired, disillusioned, and discouraged as he stared straight into her eyes.

"You told me Mousse is gone." Ranma's voice rasped across the early morning stillness, like sandpaper against Shampoo's heart. "He packed at least one thing for the trip that I guess you probably didn't know. That being my three bars of waterproof soap. He did leave one duck feather in their place, but it don't seem like a very good trade to me. I guess maybe that's just par for the course with Amazons."

He paused, maybe giving her a chance to respond, maybe just gauging the effects of his words. Shampoo hung her head and turned away, silent as the tears began to fall to the rooftop below. Ranma found no more words as well, so he turned, dropped to the street below, and walked steadily away.

-----------------------

Despite the walls between the two of them, Cologne's eyes shifted in tandem with her target's movements, arcing across one hundred and forty degrees as he dropped from the rooftop above her to the street one story below. Her gaze narrowed, tracking his progress away from the restaurant. It might well be a natural human response to hurt someone back when you yourself were hurt, but her reluctant son-in-law had pushed a little too far this time. Slandering all Amazons for the actions of two of them, one of whom would certainly throw aside all her Amazon heritage for his sake, was the act of a fool. Someday she would have to make that crystal clear to him.

But such was a matter for the future, specifically a future quite far off. Ranma still had some maturing to do before he would be ready to accept discipline and freely learn from it, rather than balking and fighting like his namesake. For now, the important thing to do was give Shampoo renewed comfort, and help her understand that this wasn't nearly the disaster that it seemed to her youth and inexperience.

Deciding not to wait until Shampoo came to her, Cologne opened the window of the bedroom she shared with her great-granddaughter, then slipped out through it and up onto the roof to join her great-granddaughter. Shampoo had pulled back a little from the edge, and was now seated with her legs drawn up against her, arms curled around her upper shins and head resting against her knees. The Matriarch crossed the distance to her youngest descendent, and once again laid a comforting hand on the girl's arm.

"-Y- you heard him leave, huh, Great-Grandmother?-" Shampoo asked, raising her head and turning to meet Cologne's gaze. She was under better control this time than the previous morning, but tears were still leaking out of her eyes.

"In Japanese, child," Cologne said, gently but firmly. Shampoo's need to learn her husband's language was just as great as it ever had been. Best to let her know that now, which would only reinforce the point Cologne would shortly be making—that this last encounter with Ranma was not any sort of ending.

Shampoo blinked at the apparent non sequitur. "O- okay," she said, then fell silent, not finding any more words just then.

"I didn't just hear him leave, Great-Granddaughter," Cologne said. "I heard his reaction as well. He really didn't take it any worse than I'd expected." Or at least, he hadn't been angrier or more bitter. Once again Cologne reminded herself never to underestimate the Saotome ability to say the wrong thing.

This, Shampoo hadn't expected. Such was clear from her wide-eyed, disbelieving stare. "But... but... what he say... Great-Grandmother, you no s- see his face..."

The Matriarch suppressed a snort. Like she'd needed to see it when she could just read his aura. "Oh, to be young again, when everything is fresh and new and a minor squabble with your loved one seems like the end of the road," she said sarcastically. "Shampoo, I told you to expect him to be unhappy. You deceived him about something that was a big factor in several important decisions he had to make. Of course he was going to resent that. But you certainly should have seen enough by now to realize how forgiving Son-in-law really is. Give him a few days to get over the worst of it, and then..."

"Then?" Shampoo prompted after a few seconds of silence.

Cologne's eyes glittered. "Then you tell him just why you originally said there were only a few days to make use of the water. You think this morning's apology was nice? You won't have seen anything yet."

"Shampoo hope you right," the lavender-haired girl said quietly. "Not able to enjoy this apology much. Too worried about what I have to tell him. But... but he do come today, less than whole day after last time he hurt me, came to say he sorry without anybody push him." Maybe her great-grandmother's take on the situation really was accurate. She was certain that Ranma had at least meant this morning's original apology—if he hadn't, if he'd just come here to weasel more soap out of her because of Mousse's theft, surely he would have demanded it from her after hearing her confession.

With some effort, she pushed aside the confusing mix of pain and hopefulness that was her thoughts of Ranma, concentrating on a less personally difficult but no less important topic. "Great-Grandmother, you say you hear what he say. Whole thing, right? You hear what he say about stupid Mousse?"

Cologne sighed. "Yes, child, I did," she replied, suddenly looking older and more weary than Shampoo had seen in a long time. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. We should probably count ourselves lucky he didn't leave some sort of exploding booby-trap behind when he took the soap."

"When he get back, I pound him flat!" Shampoo growled. Mousse had been a friend for a long time, a good friend once, but there were limits to her affection and patience. How dare he keep making things harder for her and her Airen! "Knock some sense into him."

"Do you honestly think that will do any good?" Cologne demanded, staring at her great-granddaughter with an intensity that thoroughly shocked and unnerved the girl.

The response was unsettling enough that Shampoo stopped, and really thought through her answer. "Should," she said at last, speaking a bit hesitantly. "Great-Grandmother, you know I not do more than give him medium smack almost ever. If Shampoo treat him for few days like Akane treat Ranma, he crumple like tinfoil."

"You have a point, although I believe you're underestimating his resolve," Cologne returned. "But it is true that if you hurt him seriously and thoroughly enough, you could crush his spirit and drive him away for good. Is that what you want?"

This time Shampoo took even longer to respond. "Shampoo... I want him to give up. Just be friend, not try for more. Not challenge Airen for anything other than grow as warrior, not try push him away from me, not try hurt him because he have what Mousse never ever get. That, that is what I want."

"And if you put Mousse down, broke his limbs and damaged him enough to require a long recovery time, made it utterly clear that you'd rather kill him than give yourself to him," Cologne paused for emphasis, staring directly into her great-granddaughter's eyes, "...do you think that would happen?"

Shampoo shook her head. "No," she whispered. "That maybe good as kill him." In a scenario such as that, she could far more readily envision her blind pursuer ending his own life rather than facing up to the mistakes he'd made. Louder, and with a little desperation leaking into her voice, she asked, "But what Shampoo do instead?"

The sight of Cologne sighing and shaking her head wasn't particularly reassuring. "The best thing to do is continue as you have been. Keep him at a distance, don't encourage him, but don't destroy him either. If things get worse, and matters reach a state that requires drastic steps, I'll take care of it. It's my responsibility anyway."

Shampoo blinked, and stared at her great-grandmother for what seemed like quite a long time. "How you responsible, Great-Grandmother? Ow!"

Cologne retracted her staff and leveled a glare at her youngest descendent. "Just how many lessons on our laws did you sleep through, Great-Granddaughter? In the first place, he had no right to leave the village and come here without permission. In the second, his entire purpose for this trip was to make you his bride, when by our law you were already bound to Son-in-law. You did at least know that his interfering with your own honor-bound course was itself a violation of the law, didn't you?"

Shampoo nodded, refraining from pointing out that Mousse only obeyed Amazon law as long as it didn't run counter to what he really wanted. She wasn't quite sure why, but it didn't seem like the kind of comment she ought to make.

"And he's piled act upon honorless act on himself ever since," the Matriarch continued. "It was my decision to allow him to stay here rather than sending him back to the village in the first place. It's been my decision to look the other way and allow him to make mistakes. I've cut him slack time and time again," her shoulders slumped, ever so slightly, and she let out another sigh, "and it may just turn out to be enough rope to hang him."

"What... what you mean, Great-Grandmother?"

"What do you think I mean, child? Think back over all the things Mousse has done here, especially when he thought I wasn't around to see. And then imagine what would happen to him if Mo Hwaran," she named the strictest, harshest, most hidebound member of the Council of Elders, "were to know of his record."

"Ummm... she want to come down hard on him, other, nicer Elders would fight her, argument go back and forth, and Mousse end up with few years of hard chores to do, no freedom to leave village and make pest of self. That not sound too bad to me," Shampoo said, brightening as she followed the thought along. "Is true reason you send him back to China?" Taking note of the Matriarch's glare, Shampoo stumbled to a halt.

"I didn't say, 'What if the Council as a whole found out'. And in any case you're being far too optimistic." Although Cologne couldn't really blame her. As the descendent of the Matriarch, Shampoo had all her life been held to a higher standard of adherence to the law than most people her age, and it was only natural that this would breed the assumption in her that other people could get away with even more than they really could. "If all of them were aware of the depths he's sunk to here in Japan, he would face exile or Xi Fang Gao personality rearrangement at the least."

Shampoo paled, gulped, and managed to stammer, "S- so bad?"

Cologne answered the question with a question. "How far do you trust Mousse?"

Her youngest descendent blinked. "Trust for what? He never give up fighting for Shampoo, can trust him to ends of earth, or at least ends of his own self, for that. No can trust him for anything else at all."

"And that is the root and heart of the problem. Mousse has great potential. Not as high as your husband's, but he is a treasure unequalled by anyone else born in his generation in our village. But how can we accept that kind of power from someone who consistently acts as honorlessly and selfishly as he does? Without trustworthiness, without responsibility, he ultimately represents a terrible threat."

Shampoo blinked, having missed the last part of that passage due to getting stuck on an earlier statement. "You mean, he unequalled other mans. Right?"

"No, Shampoo. His potential is even higher than your own."

"-The hell you say!-" Shampoo protested, more shocked than angry. "-I can wipe the floor with the blind idiot!-"

"That is because of his personal flaws and lack of dedication and understanding," Cologne snapped back. "If he were to turn away from this damnable fool's quest to make you his own, and instead take a good, long look at who he is, he might actually start to learn some truly important lessons." Seeing Shampoo still frowning rebelliously, the Matriarch added, "Just how much chi do you think it takes to pull off those Hidden Weapons tricks anyway?"

Shampoo's scowl only deepened. "Level of chi is not near important as control and skill."

"Exactly," Cologne agreed. "And those things require balance and understanding. Which would Mousse rather do—train his own skills, or stare dreamily out the window and watch while you train? Respectfully ask me to teach him something new, or stew in resentment that I never gave him my blessing to pursue you? Go on a journey to seek new techniques, or stay right here in Nerima to make sure Son-in-law doesn't get too close to you?"

None of those questions were very hard to answer. Shampoo nodded, conceding that point, but unwilling to give up the argument yet. "But how that say he better potential than me?"

"None of that does, it merely explains why you could 'wipe the floor with him'," Cologne replied. "If you aren't willing to take my word for this, there's really no way to convince you. The skills you'd need to evaluate someone's absolute potential on your own only come after many decades of growth and learning. If you like, just don't bother with who has the better upper limit. Think about Mousse, that you knew already that he was dangerous and skilled, and that you also knew how poorly he goes about trying to become better."

Shampoo nodded. That made a lot more sense, and didn't raise the annoying uncertainty as to whether her great-grandmother _really_ meant that Mousse's potential eclipsed hers, or whether this was just a tactic to ensure she put forth maximum effort in her own training. "Can understand that, I guess. Mousse is maybe, how they say it, diamond in the rough?"

"More like a brilliant gem that is deeply flawed," Cologne said grimly. "He could reach such heights and shine so brightly, but it would take him learning and accepting some very painful lessons. The hardest of them all is something that it's critical to accept, something he has never accepted—that some goals cannot be attained, and others shouldn't. That there comes a time to turn away from something no matter how badly you want it, and that there are lengths to which it is wrong to go.

"That was why I allowed him to stay here, even when he came without permission and for a purpose that went directly in the face of the law. If I'd given him a flat order to stay in the village away from you, he might never have faced up to the reality of his own problems. He would have simply blamed his failure on the 'interference' of others, and never grown past his own flaws. He had to be allowed to freely try and freely fail, to watch with his own eyes as you walk away and out of his life." Cologne ended the impromptu lecture as she got a good look at her youngest descendant's face. Shampoo was looking just a tad bit overwhelmed.

"That... that kind of stuff Great-Grandmother have to think through all the time?" Shampoo eventually asked. "Try to follow all that make me dizzy. Very glad is not my job to be next Matriarch."

_'-You're not the only one,-'_ Cologne thought. Choosing a kinder, gentler message to actually speak aloud, she replied, "If you were suited to the role, this sort of thing wouldn't seem so bad."

"Mmmm," was Shampoo's neutral response. "So... about Mousse. Shampoo understand, at least think so, about why we do what we do until now. But... is really working? Should change be made?"

Once more the Matriarch sighed. "I just don't know, Great-Granddaughter. It may be that helping Mousse grow beyond his flaws is our own goal that's beyond our grasp. Or it may be that trying to do so will cost us too much. I guarantee you this—if it ever seriously threatens your chances with Son-in-law, I'll throw Mousse to the wolves in a heartbeat. Ranma has endured far worse in his life than has Mr. Part-Time, and has come out far better. He's a treasure greater than Mousse in his potential and his current level of mastery..." here the Matriarch summoned up a small, but warm smile, "and my great-granddaughter loves him very much."

"Is so," Shampoo said firmly. Then, a little of the firmness deserting her, she continued, "You really think it come to that? Have to let Mousse fall to own demons in order to be with Ranma?"

"I hope not, child. But only time will tell."

-----------------------

_'There he is, by the tree.'_ Hikaru Gosunkugi's face twitched, but failed to solidify into a new expression. He couldn't quite decide whether to smile or sneer. The boy underneath the spreading foliage was one of Gosunkugi's least favorite people at Furinkan, which an impartial observer might think was odd. This person, at least, had never beaten up the scrawny voodoo student. In fact, Hikaru would be surprised if the other boy even knew his name.

No, it wasn't his personal treatment at the hands of Tatewaki Kuno that made him despise the upperclassman. A large part of it was disgust at all the blessings Fate had seen fit to dump on him; it was brutally unfair for someone to be born with both Kuno's physical talents and his bankroll. Gosunkugi snorted bitterly, his eyes taking in the cut of Kuno's kendo outfit, the richness of the cloth and the obvious lack of wear. He'd heard that Tatewaki had used to wear the standard school uniform at least occasionally, but Kuno had stopped bothering with that before Gosunkugi had enrolled in Furinkan. Given his position, disposition, and physique, no teachers bothered even to try enforcing those rules with the elder scion of the House of Kuno.

But even more than the unfair largesse Tatewaki had received from life, it was the kendoist's treatment of Akane Tendo that caused Hikaru's stomach to clench in bitter, futile knots. He'd seen the older boy hound and annoy the object of his affection time and time again, treating her in a way that surely would have got a less fortunate pervert hospitalized or incarcerated. Gosunkugi supposed he ought to be thankful that Kuno's obsession was directed against a girl strong and capable enough to handle it, rather than one of the nameless rabble of uninteresting ordinary girls that cluttered the halls of Furinkan, but that was a little more altruism than he was capable of. As far as he was concerned, the only true redeeming feature of Tatewaki Kuno was his ability to harass, annoy, and perhaps even threaten Ranma Saotome.

The scrawny boy gritted his teeth, forcibly restraining his mind from running down that track. No matter how infuriating Ranma was, no matter that he treated Akane even worse than did Kuno (comparatively speaking, of course, since Saotome didn't have the excuse of Kuno's obvious mental eccentricities to keep him from seeing just what he was really doing), no matter that Gosunkugi estimated at least three quarters of the school's female population (a figure which most definitely included some teachers) would go after the boy in a heartbeat if he weren't already pursued by girls that could squash them like flies, no matter that Ranma himself was as fast as a viper, strong as a rhino, and indestructible as a cockroach—this was no time to let himself get caught up in black thoughts of the unfairness of it all. He couldn't afford to miss this opportunity. It was quite rare for Tatewaki Kuno to appear in the open at this time; the kendoist usually spent his lunch hour in the school's training hall, dining on fine French cuisine while overseeing the training of the rest of the club members.

He still wasn't quite able to dredge up a smile, but as Gosunkugi hurried over he at least managed to put on an obsequious look. Kuno was looking around as he approached, rather impatiently Hikaru thought, as if perhaps the kendoist were waiting for someone. The older boy's eyes slid over him without pausing. It wasn't like there was anyone else at Furinkan for whom Gosunkugi could be mistaken, after all.

"Greetings, Upperclassman," Gosunkugi said as he came up beside Kuno.

"I don't really have time to talk right now, ah... whoever you are," the kendoist replied dismissively. "And despite the fact that today is the final day in which our illustrious kendo team is accepting new applicants, I don't think joining is a fitting endeavor for one such as you."

_'No, really? Did you figure that out all by yourself?' _Gosunkugi kept any hint of that reaction out of his voice as he replied, "I didn't come here to talk to Tatewaki Kuno the leader of the kendo club, but to Tatewaki Kuno, the Blue Thunder of Furinkan High."

Kuno raised one eyebrow, politely hiding his real reaction. _'Does the fool not realize that that is my title as captain of the team? Truly, it is sad to see one so deluded.'_ Glancing quickly around and still seeing no sign of the person he was waiting for, he asked, "And what is the reason for this distinction, Underclassman?"

"Captain of the team is something that will last less than one more year. But the Blue Thunder is the warrior who will fight on, never giving up, never admitting defeat, never ceasing to strive until he finally defeats that bastard Ranma Saotome. Right?"

Tatewaki smirked, inclining his head in a gracious gesture. "Truly you are far more perceptive than I first gave you credit for. Is it in regards to Saotome's villainy that you seek my aid?"

"Yes, that's right. Or rather, I wanted to give you information that may be of benefit to you. Information that I don't think Ranma wants anyone to know."

"...Very well, speak on." Kuno spoke the words with what was, for him at least, remarkable hesitance. On the one hand, the thought of finding some secret that would at last expose a true weakness of the fiend Saotome was quite appealing. On the other, no matter how hard he tried he'd never be able to forget what had happened when he tried to exploit the 'opening' his ninja servant Sasuke had told to him. The only bright spot in that entire debacle had been the fact that Tatewaki had forced his enemy to openly display his insidious and infernal powers. Only the blackest of fiends would bind a demonic cat totem spirit to himself like that. _'I should have known better than to put such faith in an incompetent like Sasuke. Hopefully this boy is a little more reliable.'_ Then he took a good long look at Hikaru. _'Perhaps it would be better to have someone else act on whatever information he provides,'_ the kendoist thought dubiously.

"It's about what he is. What I heard you realized about him before anyone else did." _'For obvious reasons.'_ "What I mean is, that he's a dark, foul sorcerer." Even in the cause of creating trouble for Ranma and hopefully giving Akane some Saotome-free time, it pained Hikaru to use such a ploy as this. Giving Ranma credit for mastering magic really grated on him, considering how his own efforts to plumb the mysteries always failed so abysmally. But it was too good a plan to pass up, and anyway he had his orders and couldn't afford to make an alteration as significant as that. Swallowing the last of his reluctance, he spit it out. "And from the fables and tales I've read, two things can really harm dark magics."

"And those are?" Kuno asked, feeling a bit more hopeful in spite of himself. Just as long as neither one of them involved cats.

"Flowing water, and cold iron."

The kendoist blinked, a sort of awestruck expression of enlightenment slowly spreading across his face. _'Water... as all know, cats hate water. And iron... the first collars were certainly made out of iron, and all know that cats utterly loathe being so bound. This sounds like it could actually work!'_

Encouraged by the manic grin spreading across his companion's face, Hikaru continued, "And I believe I know how the two things could best be combined, as well."

"You do? Please, tell me!" Kuno blinked, cleared his throat, then said, "I mean, by all means share your knowledge that might aid in Saotome's downfall."

"Use water that has stood for a night and a day in a bucket of cold iron. Fling such water over him, and I'm sure it would negate all his magical abilities, even if only for a little while." Gosunkugi just barely managed to keep the smirk off his face. Then, an instant later, it dawned on him that there was no reason for such restraint. He grinned widely, knowing that Kuno would just think he was enjoying the thought of their foe's defeat, when in reality it was another thought that was giving him such pleasure. Specifically, Gosunkugi was finding a huge amount of satisfaction in what would follow once Tatewaki Kuno learned how to summon his Pig-tailed girl whenever he so desired.

"Water... cast forth from a bucket of iron." The expression of joyous awe returned fivefold to Tatewaki's face. "The very thing which by chance... nay, which the gods themselves led me to use against him on the first day of our long struggle! The wretch dodged with alacrity and with panic, but I failed to understand the true significance! You have done me—no, you have done all of Furinkan a great service this day!" Kuno reared his head back and laughed loud, long, and hard. Gosunkugi shrunk further back into the shadow of the tree, hoping that his natural ability to lurk unseen would stand him in good stead here. He didn't want word getting back to Ranma that it was he who had put this idea in Kuno's head. Frankly, if it had been up to him, Gosunkugi would have done this whole thing via anonymous letter to the Blue Thunder of Furinkan High.

His attention was drawn back to said student, as Tatewaki finished his peal of triumphant mirth. "Know that all good and decent men, as well as Tatewaki Kuno himself, thank you, Underclassman," Kuno said, speaking with a greater measure of respect than he'd afforded anyone in at least six months. "I go now to finally cast down the foul sorcerer."

Gosunkugi blinked. "What? Now?! You can't!!" Before Kuno could do much more than blink in surprise, he swiftly amended, "That is, I think the water needs to have sat in the bucket for a full twenty-four hours, or as the tales put it, a night and a day. Anything less might not be enough to fully strike down Saotome's evil." Noting Kuno still looking reluctant, his body language clearly showing a desire to hurry off in search of a bucket, Gosunkugi wracked his brains. _'Come on, think! There's got to be some stupid quote from Sun Tzu or Shakespeare or somebody, about waiting to attack at the proper time. That at least would get through to him!'_

Before Hikaru could scrounge up an appropriate quote (or craft a sufficiently authentic-sounding counterfeit), Tatewaki sighed and let the tension bleed out of his stance. "Once again you are correct," he said regretfully. " 'At Christmas I no more desire a rose Than wish a snow in May's new-fangled mirth; But like of each thing that in season grows.' The time for attack shall be the time that I attack. And anyway I am expecting company now, and it would not be wise to abandon her or keep her waiting." Having spotted the approach of the girl he'd been awaiting all this while, Kuno continued, "And here she comes. I must ask you to take your leave now, but know this: tomorrow after school you shall see your aid carry the Blue Thunder on to glorious, majestic, final victory."

Hikaru bowed, and said his first entirely truthful sentence of the conversation. "I'll be looking forward to it." He turned and hurried away, not bothering to make eye contact with the approaching senior, but allowing her to see his smile as each passed the other.

"You are late, Nabiki Tendo." Kuno spoke the words far more cordially than he usually would have, as that very uncharacteristic tardiness had allowed him to have the fortuitous conversation that had just concluded. Had Nabiki not asked to meet him out here at the beginning of lunch, he would have been in his usual place overseeing the training of those placed under his command. Had she arrived on time, such an unfortunately ill-favored youth as his recent benefactor would never have dared to approach. Rare indeed was the Furinkan student who would cross its Ice Queen by interrupting her during a business deal—particularly one that would be so critical to her as his own illustrious patronage. No, all things considered it was truly fortunate that Nabiki Tendo had arranged to meet him here on this Thursday lunch period and not kept her own half of the bargain in timeliness.

"Sorry Kuno-baby, but you know how it is. Every now and then someone starts thinking he can get away with too much, and I have to deal out a reminder of how things really are. Arranging for that was what kept me from being here on time," Nabiki said with sarcastic honesty.

"Very well. You said you had obtained more photos of Akane Tendo and the Pigtailed Girl for me?"

"That's right. Ten thousand yen for each set of five," Nabiki replied, holding out four envelopes.

Kuno quickly took the offered packages, ripped them open, and scrutinized the contents. "Ten thousand yen for each set?! Surely you jest!"

"You ought to know by now I don't 'jest', Kuno-baby," Nabiki replied in a bored tone.

"But such a fee is ridiculously exorbitant! And these photos aren't even of particularly high quality!" Tatewaki protested all the louder. After waiting this long for his next fix, he frankly felt he deserved the very best the mercenary wench staring impassively at him could offer. At times in the past she'd procured photos for him that were much better at showing off the beauty, fire, and strength of his twin loves. And those had gone for a significantly lower price!

"Yes, about that." Nabiki sighed, and whipped up a convincing appearance of mingled sorrow, frustration, and remorse. "Ranma has been unusually harsh and suspicious lately, Tatewaki. That's the reason this batch isn't as high quality as I've managed in the past. You did know I have to evade his detection for every single photo I get for you, whether it's the pigtailed girl or Akane. Right?"

"O- of course I knew!" _'Damn that fiend! Is there no end to his vile interference, his twisted need for control over the beautiful Akane and the fiery pigtailed girl? Does his lechery know no bounds?!'_

"So then you understand that if someone were to start making things a little more generally difficult for Ranma, I might be able to acquire better specimens for you," Nabiki stated.

"Of a certainty!" Kuno declared, drawing his bokken and holding it high. To Nabiki's amused eye, it looked rather like he was pledging his service to her. "And Nabiki Tendo..."

"Yes?"

"I know that you and your henchwomen often offer bets on the various epic struggles that so regularly flare up within these grounds." Kuno smiled at her, mixing grimness and magnanimity in equal parts into the expression. "Tomorrow, after school, shall see the final battle between Saotome and myself. I finally have the key to unlocking the chains of his dark magic."

"Thanks for the hot tip, Kuno-baby," Nabiki said in immense satisfaction. _'Good job, Gosunkugi. You've earned every bit of that ten thousand yen reduction on your debt. And as for you, Ranma...'_ Her satisfaction only deepened. Even with what he would learn tomorrow, Kuno still wouldn't be competent enough to pose a truly life-threatening danger to her wayward resource, but he certainly ought to become enough of an annoyance to kill any lingering goodwill in Ranma toward his 'gift' from Shampoo. And Tatewaki wasn't the only one who'd jump at the chance; the same went for Gosunkugi, today's choice of cat's-paw, as well as Principal Kuno and probably other guys as well. There were a few hotshot freshman martial artists who were nowhere near Ranma's league but would likely be eager to rack up a few victories over him any way they could. _'Time for you to get what you earned.'_

-----------------------

It was the final half-hour of the final class of the day. Had Furinkan been a normal Japanese school, Akane would have been in the same classroom and in the same seat as she'd occupied since the beginning of the day, focusing on the last of a series of teachers with most of her mind while part of her watched in irritation as Ranma blew the lesson off. Had Furinkan been typical, any club Akane wanted to attend would have required her to stay late after school, arrive early, or perhaps sacrifice her lunch hour.

However, Furinkan was anything but ordinary, and although most clubs still held to the Japanese standard schedule, there were four with special dispensation from Principal Kuno. The members of these clubs were allowed to skip what would have been their last class of the day and meet during that time instead. These included the kendo club, for reasons that were obvious to everyone; the Taoist club, due to the fact that its members were uniformly male with shaved heads; and the astronomy club, for reasons that were a mystery to the general student body.

The fourth organization whose members were allowed to skip their final class was the first club Akane had joined in her high school career—the flower arrangement club. Yuka and Sayuri had been members since their freshman year, and they'd wanted her to join then as well, but at that time Principal Kuno had still been in Hawaii and all the clubs had had to meet outside of normal school hours. She hadn't had enough interest in the intricacies of flower arranging to get to school an hour early for the meetings. And then Kuno started up the 'defeat Akane Tendo to date her' challenge, and Akane was all the more thankful she'd made the decision she did. If she'd gotten to school an hour early for the club meeting, she would have had to deal with the mob when she left school, anticipating it and stewing about it all day long instead of getting it out of the way first thing. That would definitely have been worse.

But at the beginning of this year, the club had received a new captain, and she'd arranged the new hours with Principal Kuno. It felt a little odd to Akane; in her junior year she was attending a club whose captain was a newly-arrived freshman. She was sure it was even stranger for the seniors. But Miyuki was the heir to the school of Martial Arts Floristry, and nobody was contesting that she was the best girl for the job. Not after the way she'd whipped together that fifteen-by-thirty foot arrangement of palm trees, loa flowers, and other native Hawaiian vegetation, and presented it to Furinkan's headmaster. Akane had heard that it brought actual tears to his eyes. Whether or not that was true, she knew for a fact that it had been enough to not only get the club its preferred schedule, but also reward each member with three miniature ukulele-shaped 'get out of haircut free' passes. Akane had earned quite a bit of yen allowing Nabiki to auction hers off to students who couldn't defend themselves.

Even with all those things in the new captain's favor, Akane had still been a little nervous, at first, thinking that with Miyuki's background the other girl would probably turn out to be as much of a slave-driver with her club as Kuno was with his fellow kendoists. But Miyuki had pleasantly surprised her there too; the other girl had quickly identified how serious each club member was about their common subject matter, and she focused most of her attention and effort on working with the girls who were really motivated. She only enforced discipline when necessary to prevent the serious students from being hindered in their learning and practicing, which basically meant that Akane herself could use the club meeting to do homework or chat quietly with Yuka and Sayuri.

Her interest today in the club's official purpose had been desultory at best. She'd put a few token dahlias in a vase, surrounded them with sprigs of baby's breath, then slid a morning glory into the center of the arrangement. It had taken all of two minutes. Yuka and Sayuri were focused intently on their own work today, though, so instead of talking Akane had simply sat back and brooded, her eyes resting absently on her arrangement while her thoughts roamed over everything that had happened lately.

Five minutes ago, her confused, tangling thoughts had finally worked their way to a decent conclusion. It wasn't a perfect, flawless solution by any stretch of the imagination, but to Akane's eyes the drawbacks were more than made up for by what she'd gain. And so now she smiled broadly, and glanced over toward Sayuri and Yuka. If her friends were still caught up in their own work, she'd try making a few more arrangements of her own. But if not, it would be nice to talk things over.

Both girls appeared to be finished, Akane saw, not really noticing that Sayuri was gazing down at her arrangement of pussy-willows and tiger lilies with a murderous expression and Yuka was staring at the other girl with a mixture of sympathy and concern. "Hey, guys," Akane whispered. "Are you done?"

"Huh?" Sayuri said, blinking and looking around as if coming out of a waking dream. "Did you say something, Akane?"

"I asked if you wanted to talk now. I've got a lot of stuff to tell you," Akane whispered back. "Some really big stuff has happened. You have to promise not to tell anyone else what I'm about to tell you, okay?" Akane would certainly never expose Ranma's change of curses to the student body as a whole, but he had never actually asked her not to tell anybody and she frankly felt her friends deserved to know.

"Okay, we promise," Yuka murmured curiously. "What's up, Akane?"

The youngest Tendo took a deep breath. "It all started a little over a week ago..." Telling the whole thing took some time. It was enjoyable to watch Sayuri's eyes widen in stunned disbelief, and quite gratifying to see Yuka's expression of righteous anger as she heard of Shampoo's dirty tricks.

"I don't believe it," Yuka eventually gasped. "What... what are you going to do?"

Akane smiled even wider. "Well, it took a lot of thinking, but I finally figured out what the best thing to do is. We've got to get more waterproof soap. At first he was going to just get more from Shampoo, even though that Amazon," she invested enough venom in the word that both Yuka and Sayuri thought she might as well have gone ahead and used one that was officially dirty, "probably would have squeezed him for one date for each bar. And he needed to get at least four, two for him and two for Ryoga."

"Were you just gonna let him get away with that?" Yuka wanted to know. Akane had said 'at first', which seemed to indicate that the plan had changed. She wasn't quite sure where this fit in with what Akane had just gotten through telling her, about Ranma finding out that Shampoo had lied to him about how long he had to think things through. If she had to guess, she'd estimate that Ranma learning that had put a stop to any plans to go back to the Amazons and ask for more help.

"I wasn't exactly happy about it," Akane retorted. "But come on! Ranma may be too stubborn to admit it, but you guys aren't as idiotic as he is. You can see it for yourself, right? This stupid 'gift' from Shampoo could really get him hurt, or even killed! He can't do anything to defend himself anymore, not in his new cursed form. Thanks to Shampoo tricking him, he's now basically helpless whenever he gets splashed!" Akane wasn't quite aware that she had taken several leftover flowers between her hands and was now anxiously shredding the various blooms. "Can't you imagine how terrible that is for him? And for Ryoga too, of course, but at least for him there's not a bunch of guys ready to attack him. Ryoga's a nice guy who doesn't make enemies, and falcons are a protected species anyway, so he should be okay for awhile. But Ranma's living on borrowed time until we can get some more soap!"

"Then... you are going to tell him to go back to the Amazons?" Sayuri asked.

Akane's jaw set mulishly. "No. Not anymore. That's what I was telling him, and I tried again at lunchtime today. I even volunteered to be the one to do it, but that jerk just told me to quit sticking my nose into it, and said something even stupider than usual about Shampoo knowing that Mousse took his old stash of soap and he wants to see if she'll admit she was wrong and make up for everything on her own." At another time the thought of Ranma deliberately staying away from Shampoo would have felt quite nice, but under these circumstances he shouldn't have even been thinking about an apology! He ought to have gone to her and gotten more soap from her because she owed it to him, and not let her pressure him into forgiving her as part of the package! But, Akane reminded herself with a mental grumble, there was no way Ranma would be that decisive. She was lucky enough that he was willing to walk away from the Amazons even to this extent.

"No, I had a better idea just a little while ago." Akane pushed aside the remnants of her anger, focused again on the inspiration she'd had, and smiled. It was a much more satisfactory solution than going to the Cat Café anyway behind Ranma's back, which was what she'd been more or less planning on. "As soon as I get home, I'm going to talk to Nabiki and get her to find out how to order the waterproof soap from China."

"What?!" Sayuri exclaimed, only just holding the outburst to a whisper. "Akane, won't that be way too expensive?" She well remembered the times throughout her years of friendship with Akane that the Tendo finances had temporarily hit rock-bottom.

"What, you think I've got something better to spend my money on than keeping Ranma and Ryoga from getting hurt? Or killed?!" Akane shot back. "Yeah, it'll probably be pretty expensive, but it'll be worth it. And there's the other side of it too—this way, he won't have to go crawling back to Shampoo. It'll definitely be worth it to show that bimbo that someone else can give Ranma a real present. All she's ever done is give him stuff that turns out to be more tricks and traps and ends up hurting him. If this finally makes Ranma realize it, it would be worth it just for that."

"Ordering something all the way from China..." Yuka looked worried. "Expensive is one thing, but what about how long that'll take? Nabiki still needs to find out how to do it, even. You think Ranma can wait that long?"

"It should be okay," Akane replied. "Even if an accident happens once, it won't be the end of the world. I can jump in and save him for a change if it comes to that," she said in tones of suppressed satisfaction. Since Ranma had eventually remembered to tell her that Mousse was out of the country right now, Akane felt much better about that prospect. She could handle anyone at Furinkan, after all. "And if it did get out to the whole school, he would just have to skip until we can get him protected again. But right now nobody at Furinkan knows, and considering how long he was able to keep the secret about his original curse, he ought to make it through okay.

"Even if he is too big of an idiot to think things through," she continued, speaking in a bit of a huff as she recalled something else. "Believe it or not, two days after Ranma got rid of his old curse, I asked Nabiki whether he'd gotten her to promise not to tell anyone at school. And of course he hadn't even bothered. Honestly, he's so helpless in anything outside of a fight."

"Maybe he just needs the right person to take care of him in things like that," Yuka said slyly.

"He needs to start listening to me and using his brain is what he needs," Akane retorted. "But at least this time worked out pretty well. Nabiki promised me that she wouldn't tell anyone, and she didn't even charge me. If Ranma had been the one asking, he might have racked up a whole year's worth of debt for that."

"Don't worry, Akane," Sayuri murmured, laying the innuendo on even thicker than had her friend. "Sooner or later he'll open his eyes and realize who's really been there for him the whole time, always looking out for him and treating him better than he deserves. It'll all pay off sooner or later, I'm guessing sooner with all the—"

"HEY!" Akane exclaimed, the outburst coinciding nicely with the end-of-day bell. "It's not like THAT, you guys! I... it's just... he... Oh, was that the bell? Gotta go, see you tomorrow!"

Yuka snickered as she watched Akane stuff various books and papers into her satchel, then hurry out of the room without even remembering her flower arrangement. She cast another long look at hers. It was nice, and she'd had an enjoyable time creating it, but she didn't think she would bother with taking it home.

Then her attention shifted to her remaining friend, now staring back at her own creation with a renewed glare. "Going to take this one home and burn it too?" Yuka asked lightly.

"No. I thought I'd find a really tall building and drop it off the top," Sayuri growled.

"That doesn't sound like a very good idea," Yuka replied, letting her worry come through loud and clear. "What if it lands on someone? Shouldn't you just throw it into the canal or something?"

"Yeah, that's a good idea. Cats hate water, right?" Sayuri said, glaring all the more intensely at the unfortunate bunch of tiger lilies and pussy willows. "Drop it into the canal, from the top of the tallest building I can find..."

"Um... Sayuri, don't you think you're taking this a little too hard?" Yuka ventured to ask. "I know it must have been traumatic and all, but Ranma rescued you from the Ghost Cat before anything really bad could happen."

Sayuri made a truly disgusted noise in the back of her throat. "Excuse me, Yuka. I think that having my first kiss stolen by a giant undead cat easily qualifies as 'really bad'." The schoolgirl's gaze sharpened, as if she were trying to bore a hole through her flower-arrangement-as-effigy. Then, some tension leaving her, she sighed and said, "A first kiss is special, you know? It doesn't have to be with the guy you're gonna spend the rest of your life with, it doesn't even have to be with a guy who's special to you, but it darn well should be with a special guy! And I don't mean 'Ghost Cat' kind of special!"

"Well, it could be worse," Yuka said sympathetically. "Akane could have overheard you telling me that you always kind of hoped you'd be able to get your first kiss from Ranma when he was under a random love spell."

Sayuri involuntarily shivered. That had been a close call. "Yeah, you're right," she admitted as she got to her feet and gathered her own schoolbooks. "I need to move on past this." She hesitated a moment as Yuka followed suit, then deliberately walked away leaving her arrangement behind.

"Miyuki will be happy, anyway," Yuka joked. "You've used those same flowers for your last four bouquets. I think the monotony was starting to get to her."

-----------------------

Ranma moved through the halls, uncomfortably aware that something in his immediate surroundings was amiss. He couldn't quite put his finger on the wrong note, but it was definitely there. It wasn't the absence of Akane; she'd spent her last period in that silly club for the past several weeks, and by now he'd gotten used to meeting up with her at the front gate of Furinkan to walk home.

"Hey, Ranma!" The boy in question turned, to find Hiroshi coming up behind him. "I hear Kuno's waiting in the courtyard to challenge you. Word is he's really gonna go all out this time."

The pigtailed teen blinked, and shot a searching glance at the other students in the hall. Now that he was looking for it, he could easily make out the speculative glances and the thrill of anticipated vicarious combat. Ranma supposed that if it had been a real threat, rather than the Blue Thunder, his danger sense would have been tripped, but as it was he'd just vaguely been aware that something was different.

He turned back to Hiroshi and grinned. "Thanks, man. Not that I need the warning or nothin' to deal with him."

"I dunno, Ranma." Hiroshi lowered his voice. "Nabiki's stacking the odds a little differently this time. She's giving out a better payout on you than she usually does, by a pretty fair margin."

Ranma stared at his friend, nonplused. "What's that mean, exactly?"

"Means she's encouraging people to bet on you, offering more money than usual if you win. And I think we all know Nabiki doesn't like to let large sums of yen get away from her." It had taken Hiroshi three solid years of getting fleeced by Nabiki in her betting games, as well as a blistering lecture on financial responsibility from his mother, but he'd finally started to wise up to some of her tricks. "It seems to me like she's expecting something different than the usual this time."

"And that's not all," Daisuke piped in from behind Ranma's current position. "I hurried on ahead just now and got a good look outside. Kuno's waiting by the front gate, and he's got something pretty big sitting beside him. It's covered with a tarp, so I couldn't tell what it really was, but it looked about the size of four okonomiyaki carts like Ukyo's clumped together in a square."

"The tarp wasn't moving around or nothing, was it?" Ranma asked nervously. Somewhere in the back of his mind lurked the nagging fear that one day Kuno would decide to try another cat-trap at school. Sure, the last one had turned out pretty badly for the kendoist, but it wasn't like he seemed to learn any lessons from the standard beatings he got. "You hear any yowls or hisses or anything?"

"Fraid not. Looking for an excuse to give Akane a little more action?" Daisuke said slyly, elbowing his lady-killer friend in the ribs.

"Get real, Daisuke," Ranma said with a snort. "I got better things to think about than that on the worst day of my life. Which this better not be," he muttered darkly and strode away toward the waiting confrontation.

Another couple of minutes brought him out through the front gate and into sight of Kuno. As Daisuke had said, the kendoist was standing beside a bulky object covered with a tarpaulin. Ranma didn't have long to wonder about its true nature though, for as soon as Kuno caught sight of him, the older boy turned and whipped the covering off in one blinding motion.

"Face your long-awaited and richly deserved doom, Saotome!" Tatewaki proclaimed, turning back to face his nemesis. "Today is the day you—what?" His lower jaw dangling slightly and his eyes bugging out, Tatewaki stared at the space that had held the foul sorcerer only an instant before. But there was no sign to be seen of Ranma there now.

From his new position, clinging to a windowsill two stories up, Ranma studied the situation. It grated on his pride a little, to have retreated so quickly before even seeing what Kuno's 'secret weapon' was, but he didn't let that bother him too much. If there was even the slightest chance that this was another cat-themed ploy, he wanted to get out of the line of fire and to a place of relative safety before deciding on his next move.

As it turned out, though, Kuno hadn't yet opted to repeat his earlier mistake. The tarpaulin had been covering a large, low-slung flatbed trailer sort of thing, and said trailer was filled full of what any Jusenkyo-cursed victim could instantly identify as buckets of cold water. _'Why's he got those? Did someone finally tip him off about how he could summon his pigtailed girl?'_ For a second he wondered whether Nabiki might have been the guilty party, then recalled what Hiroshi had said—she'd been structuring her bets to encourage people to bet on him to win. And Nabiki had to be smart enough to know that even if Kuno did splash him, that wouldn't mean he'd lose to the likes of the Blue Thunder. He'd just fly away, flipping his opponent the bird with a pinfeather as he left, and she'd have to cancel all her bets.

No, Nabiki probably just heard Kuno say something about having a new surprise in store for this fight, and in that kind of situation—a rival coming up with a new move or tactic—Ranma usually did have to lose the preliminary match before coming back and winning the real one. But the fact that those practice fights weren't the real thing wouldn't matter to Nabiki; she would collect her winnings anyway.

Well, she was gonna be disappointed this time, Ranma thought with some satisfaction. Kuno finally getting some idea of splashing him wasn't nearly enough to pose a threat, although he suspected it could prove to be a serious irritation.

With that in mind, he decided he'd better get a better idea of just what his opponent knew, didn't know, and was expecting from this ploy. "Yo, Kuno! Up here!"

Tatewaki looked around, then up, and located the target of his ire. "Curse you, Saotome! Think you to escape beyond the reach of my righteous vengeance?!"

"Actually I was just checking out the view from up here," Ranma retorted, putting on his best 'bored' expression. "Whatcha got in those buckets, anyway?"

"As if you didn't know, and did not flee from this very weapon!" Kuno pivoted, in one smooth motion drawing his bokken with one hand while reaching into the trailer and grasping a bucket with the other. "As all know, water cast forth from a bucket of cold iron is a weapon feared like no other by the wielders of dark magics! With this, I shall finally smite thee once and for all!"

"Huh?" was Ranma's eloquent response. _'He thinks that... where the heck would he...'_ His eyes widened in pained realization. Unconsciously shifting his weight and tightening the grip of his feet, Ranma brought both hands forward and up and began massaging his forehead. Taking a two-story fall would have hurt less than this anyway. "Kuno, I can't believe even you are this dumb," he said disgustedly. "That was a gaijin fantasy movie. Ain't no way I'm gonna melt down into nothing when you throw that over me." He'd never had a high opinion of Kuno's mental prowess, but taking a cue from The Wizard of Oz was even lower than he had thought the kendoist would sink.

"Silence, wretch! I attack!" With this proclamation Kuno leaped, rising into the air with bokken and bucket aimed directly at his foe.

"Yeah, whatever," Ranma retorted, pushing away at a sharp downward angle from the window, the force of his move sending him shooting down through the air much faster than a standard fall. He was safely on the ground before Kuno had covered even a quarter of the distance of his own jump. With no target waiting for him, and unwilling to drop either bokken or bucket, Kuno didn't quite know how to handle the endpoint of his leap. Ranma got a good smirk out of seeing the kendoist smack awkwardly into the side of the building, even as he felt the tiniest measure of respect at the skill Kuno had showed in altering his trajectory that much. The upperclassman's original path would have sent him crashing through the glass of the window, but he'd managed to avoid that. _'Guess I've actually been a good influence on this moron,'_ Ranma thought with equal parts surprise and smugness.

"I fight on!" Kuno roared, landing from his fall and sprinting back to the trailer. "You can't dodge forever!"

"I can sure dodge long enough for you to make a fool out of yourself by wasting all that water," Ranma replied, retreating from the now-charging Kuno in a series of backflips. As his hands touched the ground for the final move, he clenched his hand and pulled up a clod of dirt. Coming back to his feet, he chucked this straight at the bucket Kuno carried.

The kendoist turned his charging attack into a whirl, bringing his sword around and deflecting the missile. "Not this time, Saotome!"

"You just spilled about three quarters of the water when you did that. You do know that, right?"

Kuno snarled and tossed the bucket with its remaining water at his hated foe, then raced back to get another one. For Ranma's part, it wasn't too hard to dodge the relatively small amount of water remaining in the container. "Hey, Kuno, see if you can spill the next one into the flower beds. That way at least you can say you accomplished something at school this year."

"Jest if you will, but today shall be your downfall!" Having learned a lesson about moving too swiftly while carrying his precious anti-sorcery liquid, Kuno settled for a measured stalking tread of doom rather than a charge. "Today is the day I finally put an end to your evil!"

"NO!!" The cry came from above, and was followed immediately by the splintering crash of breaking glass and the crunch of destroyed masonry. Ranma and Tatewaki both looked up, gaping at the sight as a desk was forcibly ejected through a second-story window (and a bit of the wall around it), streaking down to smash with brutal force into the midst of Kuno's collection of liquid ammunition. The trailer buckled, both ends coming up as the middle was forced down, and in an instant the only water left to Kuno was what was contained in the bucket he held.

"Who... what... why...?" Tatewaki wasn't left to wonder long. As the dust cleared from what had formerly been a standard Furinkan window, he saw his raven-haired love standing there, looking faint, swaying dangerously on her feet. "Akane Tendo! Step back, or you may fall!"

"Upp... upperclassman Kuno..." The words escaped Akane's lips only just loudly enough to be heard across the distance. "Please... catch me..." And with that she tilted far enough forward to make a descent inevitable.

Casting both weapons aside, and displaying greater speed than he had in the fight, Tatewaki raced across the distance. Ranma, meanwhile, though tense, held back. He had seen clearly enough that Akane was still in control of her actions. Sure enough, it was with a deliberate motion that she stepped forward and angled herself toward the spot toward which Kuno was streaking. The kendoist was there in plenty of time to break her fall, staring up with a look of mingled desperation and resolve, his arms stretched wide to catch her prostrate form. Ranma just watched, feeling rather ambivalent about the interference, as Akane angled herself so that her landing was knees-first on Kuno's forehead, followed up by a rebound to the ground, an elbow to the solar plexus, and an uppercut that sent him flying in the general direction of home.

-----------------------

From her third-floor vantage point, Nabiki pondered the events she'd just witnessed. That wasn't how it was supposed to happen. _'Oh well. Kuno will try again soon enough, I'm sure. And if I recall the spread correctly, almost nobody bet on Akane being the one to end the fight. We profited about as much as we would have if Kuno forced Ranma to retreat.'_ Nobody who was at all familiar with the two boys in question ever bet on that option.

But Akane's interference was a little troublesome. Nabiki had wanted Ranma to get a good bit more fed up with things in general before Akane started being nice and helping him out again. This act had clashed with both parts of that. It might get Ranma thinking more positively of her sister, but Nabiki doubted it would have anywhere near as big of an impact as something like this would have had in another week or two. _'I swear, little sister. Your cooking isn't the only thing you sabotage.'_

-----------------------

"You didn't have to do that, you know."

Akane's only response was a noncommittal sort of sound, one which nonetheless managed to convey the impression that she was both humoring him and quite pleased with herself. Ranma's frown became a degree more pronounced.

"I'm serious, Akane. I had everything under control."

"I'm sure you did, Ranma."

The boy in question gritted his teeth. If Akane had been talking to Kuno or Ryoga, she would have a right to expect them to miss the patronizing way she'd said that. But Ranma Saotome wasn't anywhere near that clueless. "So that's why you decided to drop out of a second-story window, huh? A clumsy chick like you ought to know better than to take a risk like that for nothing."

"Excuse me, Ranma." The self-satisfied note in Akane's tone was suddenly conspicuous by its absence. "I can handle jumps like that just fine, thank you very much!"

Ranma snorted disdainfully. "Yeah, you sure proved it during that mess with Kuno and the Phoenix, didn't ya? Shampoo had to dive and save your butt from that fall, if I recall correctly."

"I would have been just fine!" Akane snarled, hands tightening into fists at the memory. This really wasn't a good time to hear Ranma putting her down and showering more praise on Shampoo.

"I'm sure you would, Akane." He managed to duplicate her earlier tone with near-flawless exactitude.

"I'd have been a lot better than you would have if Kuno had gotten that water on you!" Akane exclaimed. "He was about to show everyone in the school what's happened to you! Everybody there would have found out your secret. Can't you even thank me for saving you?!"

"Saving me? From _Kuno_?!" Curiously enough, Ranma felt his irritation diminishing. If Akane really was that clueless, he felt like maybe he ought to be pitying her rather than chewing her out. "Akane, I could take that moron with both hands tied behind my back. I can certainly manage to dodge a few random splashes from him."

"Whatever," Akane said, making it clear that she didn't believe a word of it. "You're always getting splashed at the worst possible moment. Like you could really manage to dodge forever when someone's _trying_ to get you wet."

"Oh, you mean like what happened when Mousse was tryin' to stick me with a Yazniichuan curse... no, wait, that ain't right. I seem to recall avoiding the worst he could throw at me, even when he had you as a hostage."

Akane felt her temper slide just that much closer toward a breaking point. "Ranma! Could you please stop bringing up the Amazons already!"

"Well, excuse me for the fact that my example wasn't something you wanted to hear!" Ranma took a few moments after this to breathe and calm down, then said, "Look. Thanks for thinking about me and worrying about me and all that, but don't expect me to act like I needed help from you with Kuno. If I had to get someone to save my butt from somebody like him, Pop would turn over in his grave."

-----------------------

"A-CHOO!!" The sneeze couldn't have come at a worse time for Genma, as it caused him to break his stride. And when you're carrying a hundred pounds of various stolen foodstuffs on your shoulders, racing along half a step ahead of your best friend (similarly encumbered), who is in turn three steps in front of a mob of angry townsfolk, the last thing you want to do is break your stride. The elder Saotome stumbled, feeling Soun smack into him from behind an instant later. He used the last second he had before the arrival of the mob to fire off the most vicious glare he could manage at Happosai's distant backside, wishing that the murderous voices of the villagers were loud enough to drown out the Master's obnoxious chortles. How much longer was this damnable trip going to last?

-----------------------

"Fine!" Akane screeched. "Next time I'll just leave you alone!"

"Good!" he retorted. "Then I wouldn't have to worry about you breakin' your neck from trying a move you don't have what it takes to pull off! If Kuno hadn't've been there you woulda wiped out completely on the landing!"

"If he hadn't been there I wouldn't have jumped in the first place! Or angled myself like that!" At this point only the desire to win the verbal argument was holding Akane back from belting her ungrateful betrothed. Already quite a large part of her mind was wondering whether the restraint was worth it. "That's like saying that you shouldn't walk on the fence because if you jumped up to it and it wasn't there you'd fall in the canal!"

"Unlike some people I know, I wouldn't do something that dumb."

"How dare you!"

Ranma blinked. _'Wait a minute. That wasn't Akane.'_

He whirled, his gaze leaving the fuming tomboy and arcing around to settle on the fuming Lost Boy. His rival was standing about ten feet down the road at the mouth of an offshooting alley, clutching a map in one hand and glaring furiously toward him. "Ryoga," he said blankly. "What are you doing here?"

Ryoga swelled further in rage. "How can you say that, you bastard! Today was the day I set down in your challenge letter. Or were you planning to run away again?"

"Yeah, it was today, which means the actual fight will happen in another week when you finally find your way back..." Ranma let the sentence fade away as he realized that the impossible had actually happened. Ryoga wasn't going to be late for a preset battle? But then again, the time for the match was still two hours off, and this street certainly wasn't the place where Ryoga had said he'd meet him. If his rival hadn't randomly run into them now, Ranma didn't suppose the odds were very good that the other boy would have been able to keep the appointment.

Feeling somewhat better now that the universe didn't seem to be falling to pieces around him, Ranma spoke again. "Heh. You're early, Ryoga, but I guess I don't mind about that."

"You should!" Ryoga declared, shucking off his backpack and assuming a ready stance with his umbrella. "It just means you had less time to live! I'm going to pay you back now for all of it, Ranma! Tricking and cheating me—getting me this curse—tormenting Akane—I'm going to serve you everything you've earned for all these honorless acts!"

Meanwhile, Akane herself was beginning to feel a little dizzy, not only from her attention switching back and forth between Ranma and Ryoga, but from vacillating between two courses of action. Should she try to stop this? If it had been anyone else making this challenge, the answer would be an emphatic 'yes'. But this was Ryoga! The guy who'd been screwed over the worst by Shampoo's latest scheme! And it was partly Ranma's fault that that had happened. Didn't he deserve a chance to work out some of that injustice? He was the only guy who Akane would trust not to take unfair advantage of Ranma's new curse in a battle like this, but she did trust him. But what if an accident happened? Things like that were always possible, even with fighters as skilled as these two. But could it just make things worse if she tried to put a stop to it? Frozen in uncharacteristic indecision, Akane held silent as the focus shifted from words to actions.

Realizing that Ryoga was about to charge, Ranma jumped back in a long graceful leap that touched him down on top of a light post. Ryoga's words almost didn't register at all. There wasn't much there he hadn't heard before, really, although Ryoga referring to his Jusenkyo curse plainly, clearly, and without fear while in Akane's earshot was of course new. Still, that ultimately didn't mean much; certainly it didn't mean this fight couldn't follow the old familiar pattern.

But even as Ranma was putting the finishing touches on his retaliatory round of smack-talking, a thought struck him. _'Doesn't this fit in with some of the stuff I've been thinking about lately? Even if Shampoo lied through her teeth to me, that don't change why I decided to take this new curse. I wanted to stop doing all the same old stuff, make some real changes for the better...'_

With that in mind, he ran the other boy's words back through his head, paying more attention than he usually did to the actual contents of the trash-talk. As he did so, a frown spread over his face, one darker than any he'd worn when speaking to Akane. "Ryoga..." he growled.

"What do you think you're doing!" the Lost Boy demanded, scowling furiously up at him. Did Ranma think retreating to the top of that pole and then just standing there staring off into space was going to save him? With a growl, Ryoga shot forward, smashing cleanly through the base of the light post with his umbrella.

As his former perch toppled toward the ground, Ranma reacted quickly enough to bounce away from it to the top of a one-story building. Immediately he jumped again, going two stories higher. He landed on this new high ground and turned back to face Ryoga. "Hey, Pork-brain! If you want a fight, you're gonna have to catch up with me!"

"Damn you, Ranma! You're not getting away!" Ryoga left the ground behind as well, being sure to keep one eye on Ranma to avoid losing his way as he jumped to the rooftops. The coward was already fleeing higher!

Back on the ground, and all too aware that she couldn't manage the second jump she'd need to follow the two, Akane screeched out, "You guys! Don't... wait..." She fell silent, realizing the utter futility of it all, remained silent for a few tense moments, then stomped off toward home. There were pigtailed practice dummies there in need of a good pounding.

-----------------------

_'Okay, this should be far enough.'_ They'd covered the length of three city blocks, taking a path that Ranma knew his shorthaired fiancée couldn't follow, and would now be well outside of said girl's hearing. It had been a pain, too, making sure to stay far enough ahead of Ryoga that the other boy didn't try to launch any ranged attacks—Ranma really didn't want to think about what could happen if those bandanas whipped through someone's window after he dodged them—but not so far that Ryoga might lose sight of him.

But the time for his retreat was done. Ranma braced himself, both physically and mentally, as Ryoga touched down on the opposite side of the rooftop that would be their battleground. It was the highest nearby, which meant that he could say what he needed to say without having to worry about anyone overhearing.

"Finally ready to stand and fight?" Ryoga snarled, driving forward with his arm cocked back for a punch.

"Yes and no," Ranma snarled right back, slipping to one side and using his greater speed to launch a quick kick that bounced off Ryoga's hip. The move didn't do any damage, but it did knock the Lost Boy off-balance while giving Ranma the traction he needed to push away in a leap. The upshot of the exchange was that each boy ended up more or less where the other had started out.

That had been Ranma's intention in more ways than one. "So what about you, Ryoga? You ready to yell a whole bunch more lies about just which one of us really doesn't have any honor?"

"I'll tell the world what I've always said!" Ryoga roared, coming in for the attack again, striking harder and faster than Ranma was quite prepared for. The pigtailed teen quickly found himself forced on the defensive, without a chance to unleash the arguments he'd wanted to make. "That you don't have any! That you torment people for your own sick fun! Me... the other guys out for your head... the girls who're blind enough to want you... Akane..." His voice trembled a bit on that last word, but his attacks never faltered. If anything they increased in intensity. "And you were doing it again just a few minutes ago! Yelling at her and treating her like she's worthless, when she's about a million times too good for you!" With that battle-cry, he launched his most furious combination of strikes yet.

Under normal circumstances, Ranma could have handled the attack easily. Ryoga's anger lent him power, but the Lost Boy's focus was suffering ever so slightly. It was only by a small percentage, but it was enough that if Ranma had kept his cool and perfectly maintained his own focus, he could have weathered the storm without trouble. However, the sheer utter gall Ryoga had shown in the focus of his latest verbal attack managed to get to Ranma, striking a chord of anger within his own heart, and as a result he made a slight mistake. In looking for a chance to work in an attack of his own, he misjudged the direction of Ryoga's offensive and was clipped by a low kick that took his feet right out from under him.

Time seemed to slow as he tumbled toward the rooftop, hearing Ryoga's harsh cry of triumph and sensing the follow-up punch blaze down toward him. Ranma threw everything he had into a defensive measure, snaking out one leg and awkwardly bracing one ankle against Ryoga's shin, giving him the purchase he needed while still tumbling down through the air to push away in a barely-controlled corkscrewing roll. He was three feet away from Ryoga by the time he actually hit the rooftop and cannoned across most of its length before rising back to his feet, both palms skinned and stinging, and angrier than ever.

"Still good at running away," Ryoga grunted harshly, striding forward with hands clenched.

"And you're still good at lyin' through your teeth and blaming me for your own garbage!" Ranma shot back. "You wanna talk to me about Akane, P-chan? Where the hell do you think you've got the right?! I only know one guy in her life that she really, honestly trusts—and it's you." The content of this admission brought Ryoga up short with a snort of surprise, his eyes blinking as he tried to process this twist. "You know it and I know it. Whenever there's any question of you an' me fighting about something, Akane _always_ takes your side, believes in you, calls me a liar, and blasts me for 'picking on you'." He spat the last three words.

"That just goes to show she knows who her real friends are!" Ryoga declared, still angry, still intending to reduce his opponent to a bloody pulp, but content for the moment to fight the battle that he knew he could win easily. Ranma might have saved Akane from a few people even more depraved than he was, but he never gave her the kind of support, care, and affection that Ryoga tried so hard to provide. But trust Ranma to get his panties in a twist because Akane didn't just roll over and accept the torment and belittling that he had for her!

"Real friends?" Ranma sneered, unconsciously tensing toward a stance designed for maximum offense. "You know something, Ryoga? There's only one guy in Akane's life that she really trusts, and by a strange coincidence, there's also only one guy who's all the time betraying her and takin' advantage of her. And you know what?" His eyes narrowed to blazing squints. "They're the same guy. Ryoga P. Hibiki, the only guy ever to trick Akane into posing nude for him."

"SHUT UP!" Ryoga's cry shook the heavens, but was almost covered by the thunder of his approaching charge. He held his umbrella out as if to impale Ranma. "It's not like that at all!"

Now more than ever his opponent's focus was lacking. Ranma found no real difficulty in flowing back and away, circling in retreat without getting too near the edge of the roof, avoiding Ryoga's strikes while still maintaining his verbal offensive. "Oh, no?" he asked, disgust dripping from his tone. "How would you put it then, P-chan? Care to explain what I missed? Want to tell me how it really wasn't bad for Akane at all, the girl who hates perverts and whose worst nightmare is getting taken advantage of like that?" Admittedly this was more of a guess than actual knowledge on his part, but considering the way she always harped on that issue Ranma was pretty certain of his conclusion.

"I said shut up!" was Ryoga's tortured reply. The Lost Boy increased the fervor of his attacks, but was unable to increase the skill and control with which he applied them. "I'd never hurt her!"

"You were hurting her every time you crawled into the damn bed with her!" Ranma yelled. "You think it was okay because she didn't know what was happening? Did you think that made it all right to do just what you wanted? Akane an' me may fight, but I never took anything from her that she didn't want to give! An' that's exactly what you did. You know damn well Akane would never have done anything she did if she knew who her _pwecious wittle piggy _really was!"

"Damn it, it wasn't my fault!" Ryoga screamed. "I never asked for that curse, Ranma! It was your fault. And that wasn't enough for you, was it!" Ranma dodged a particularly vicious but sloppy punch, allowing his scowl of contempt to grow ever deeper. At this point Ryoga wasn't fighting with much more skill than Akane might show. "Not enough for you that I turned into something small, and weak, and helpless. You had to take away the one bright spot in my dark, cold, lonely life! Maybe..." he faltered both physically and verbally, his gaze falling to the rooftop below him, his attack grinding to a halt as anger was displaced by sorrow and desperate confusion, "maybe I wasn't... maybe it was..." He fell silent, unable to verbalize or even really think the words. Gulping a few times, he found a thought that could be spoken. "But at least being P-chan gave Akane some comfort, you bastard! I suppose that just made it even worse for you, that she had something to care for that cared for her. She'll never see her pet again, and I bet you don't even care that that's gonna hurt her. I bet it even makes you happier!"

"You hypocrite," Ranma spat back, only angrier at this accusation. If Ryoga believed it was so freaking therapeutic for Akane to have a pet, then why didn't the jerk just buy her a puppy or something? That way she'd have it around whenever she wanted it, not just the small amount of time 'P-chan' had been able to be there. No, this was just another example of Ryoga deciding his own tiny point of view was the be-all and end-all of truth.

He didn't have a chance to say any of this, though; his first two words were enough to break Ryoga's immobility.

The Lost Boy snarled, blasting into motion again. He charged, discarding the umbrella and wrenching a double fistful of bandanas off his forehead as he came. "I'm not taking any more of this from you!" he yelled, sending them storming toward Ranma in a blizzard of yellow and black.

"Moko Takabisha!" Ranma's chi blast hit the cloud of cloth and was shredded, in the process dispersing enough of the swarm to allow him to slip through unscathed. There was nothing he could do about the remainder, but at least there weren't any buildings over five stories high in the direction the missiles had flown. Since they had originated at a point twice that height, the projectiles would probably lose their chi charge before hitting anything other than empty air.

_'Did the best I could in moving us up here, but he's still pulling out stuff that could be a threat to other people. Looks like it's always gotta be me who does all the work of keeping innocent people from gettin' hurt in our fights,'_ Ranma thought bitterly. _'Well, fine. I'll do just that. And whether he likes it or not he's damn well going to listen to what I've got to say.'_

Ryoga was already preparing for a new attack, a replacement set of bandanas spinning in one hand as he charged them with chi. Before he could complete the process, Ranma exploded forward at top speed. "FIST OF DIVINE RETRIBUTION!" he yelled, arm cocked back and trembling with restrained force, poised for a brutal power blow.

The Lost Boy snarled and released the bandanas early, before they'd been empowered enough to do real damage. Ranma barely slowed down as he blew through the screen, rushing inexorably toward the focal point of his attack. However, that slight delay was enough to let Ryoga brace himself to meet his opponent's offensive. He didn't know whether to cheer or sneer at the mistake. Ranma coming at him with brute force? Sure, the jerk was strong, but he'd never beat Ryoga Hibiki that way!

It dawned on Ryoga at the worst possible instant that Ranma knew that, and also that his opponent certainly wasn't in the habit of telegraphing his moves so badly. Ryoga scrambled to adjust his defenses, but the last-second awkwardness only made things worse. As he closed in on Ryoga's personal space, Ranma pushed his skill to the limit, snapping his arm down and cutting the speed of his run in an instant with a half-turning skipping misstep. The maneuver nearly sent him into an uncontrolled fall. But his reflexes and control were equal to the task, and instead of falling he twisted, bent, and unleased a high kick that arced nearly straight up, brushing past Ryoga's Adam's Apple and catching him under the chin. His head was snapped back by the force of the blow, his entire body launched briefly into the air.

None of the various regimes Ryoga had undergone to build toughness helped very much against a blow from that direction. The Lost Boy crashed to the ground and curled instinctively toward the fetal position, holding his head and moaning.

Ranma stared grimly down at him, thankful that the strike had been a decisive one. He'd held back enough to be sure that he wouldn't do permanent damage from the attack, but hadn't been very confident that Ryoga's sheer endurance and resilience wouldn't be enough to allow him to shrug off the weakened kick. But evidently he'd judged his offensive perfectly; Ryoga was down but not out, temporarily floored with no option but to listen to what he had to say.

"Maybe you remember Mikado Sanzenin," he started out. "Maybe you remember that he wanted to get a kiss from Akane? That's all she was to him, just a pretty girl to take what he wanted from. What she wanted didn't matter to him. And I don't think you were there to hear it, but there was something I said to that scumbag. You know what it was?" He paused for just an instant, then quoted himself: " 'Akane is my fiancée. You touch her, and I'll kill you!'

"You know why I said that? It wasn't cause I wanted her as a fiancée. They stuck her an' me together without bothering about what either one of us wanted or thought or felt. But that meant it was my responsibility to protect her, and for damn sure I was gonna get pissed when I saw somebody treat her like she was just a piece of meat. Something to take what he wanted from without caring how that made her feel afterwards.

"And then there's you!" He paused for a moment, rebuilding the control that had threatened to slip away from him. There were things he'd never been able to see clearly about his rival's actions with Akane, things that he just had not been able to fully understand until the situation had changed and he spent so much time thinking about those changes. He saw it all now, though, understood all too well what it really had meant for Ryoga to do what he did. What Ranma had let him do.

Nor was that new clarity of sight the only reason for his anger. Some corner of his mind sensed that this had been building for a much longer time. Every occasion when Akane had misunderstood something and defended Ryoga in either form from him, every instance when his rival had taunted him from his position of safety, every time he'd tried and failed to protect Akane from the one guy who was really betraying her trust—all of it was boiling up now, with venomous interest accrued. Ranma took a deep breath and resumed the attack. "I cut you a lot of slack because it ain't exactly the same thing. I know you really do care about her. But that ain't the same thing as respecting her, and every time you slunk into her bed, stared at her while she changed, or cuddled your head against her chest you showed the same kinda respect to Akane as you would to a streetwalker.

"And you think you got some kinda right to get pissed at me for what finally happened to put a stop to all that? You came strutting over to the Tendos and told 'em all that Shampoo gave you this new curse to make you weaker! To keep you from having an advantage over me! You lying jerk, you're a heck of a lot less helpless in your cursed form now!" he yelled, feeling his anger threaten to rise up to billowing flames. "I'll say this straight out, Ryoga... I didn't tell Shampoo to splash you even if you didn't want it, but right now I wish I had!"

Somewhere in this diatribe Ryoga had uncurled and risen at least as far as his knees. He flinched visibly at Ranma's final proclamation, but almost as quickly he stood to his feet. His head was still bowed, though, preventing Ranma from seeing his face. He spoke quietly, so quietly that with Ryoga's current posture Ranma almost couldn't make out the words. "It's never enough for you, is it?" The despair in the other boy's voice was perhaps the most effective deterrent to Ranma's anger yet. He gave his own nearly-imperceptible flinch. Unseeing, Ryoga continued. "My bread, my humanity, my happiness, my pride, and now even my self-respect. How much more do you want to take from me?"

"I'm sick and damn tired of people blaming me for stuff that's their own fault, Ryoga." But he said it without rancor, more weary than anything else.

"Oh, of course, the great Ranma Saotome could never be part of the problem." Suddenly Ryoga's head snapped up. Ranma flinched again, more sharply than before, at the look of boundless pain and emptiness in the other boy's eyes. "I've got news for you, Ranma. Me being wrong doesn't make you right. And at least I know what I can do about that."

The slightest of edges had reappeared in Ryoga's voice. That, along with the distinctly familiar sense of heavy oppression that was suddenly filling the air, was more than enough to clue Ranma in. _'Shi Shi Hokodan,'_ he instantly realized, preparing to dodge. But almost as quickly, this realization was followed hard by another. _'It's no problem if he just fires off the standard move. But if he uses the Perfect form, here on top of this building...'_

He wanted to think better of Ryoga than that, and certainly the Lost Boy wouldn't do something like that deliberately. But from some of the things Ranma had heard during the conclusion of his first battle against Ryoga's strongest move, he suspected that when the despair reached too high a level his rival's conscious control over his actions faded to negligible levels. Right now Ryoga might literally be incapable of that kind of abstract thought, unable to realize the consequences of unleashing his ultimate move in this particular setting.

_'But at least he'll know how to handle this,' _Ranma thought grimly, turning in the next heartbeat and racing away.

As he crossed the second rooftop he heard Ryoga's cry of rage echo behind him. It was encouraging more than anything else, since anger, while it might be as negative as depression, would certainly impede the use of the Perfect Shi Shi Hokodan. Ranma grinned mirthlessly and just kept running, sneaking a glance back over his shoulder every now and then. Truth be told, he wasn't sure whether he'd rather have this out with Ryoga here and now, or give his rival the slip and let him cool off for a while.

His inability to make up his mind made the decision for him. Only concerted effort on Ranma's part would have allowed him to elude Ryoga's pursuit now, and without quite being able to decide on such a measure, Ranma found his shadow sticking faithfully with him over the next half mile. At the end of this time, Ranma decide they might as well get it all over with, and changed from random flight to a directed course.

Five minutes later found the two boys in the very vacant lot that Ryoga had said would be the site of his challenge. Ranma stood in the center, poised on the balls of his feet, ready to run again if Ryoga loosed a Perfect Shi Shi Hokodan, ready to dodge and counterattack if the Lost Boy tried any lesser tactic.

For the moment, though, Ryoga seemed content to stand at the edge of the lot and stare balefully at him, not moving to launch any new attacks. "I'm sick of you running away," he growled thickly, hands clenching tight. Ranma just summoned a thin smile in response. Ryoga angry was a lot less dangerous than Ryoga supremely depressed.

"I mean it, Ranma! You think you can just waltz away and get out of sight, and my direction sense will get me lost and that'll be it for me for the next month! Don't you think I wish I could be around all the time?! Don't you think I wish I could do better?! Don't you think I wish I could be there for Akane as more than her pet P-chan?!"

At this Ranma did flinch. "Shut up, you moron!" he half-demanded, half-pled. "We ain't on top of a building anymore. You want someone to hear you blabbing about that?!" Deciding that a change of subject might work more reliably, he continued, "And for the record I only ran because I didn't want you to fire off your stupid depression bomb and maybe take out that building."

"I wasn't going to do that," Ryoga growled hatefully. "I was going to force you over the edge, and take care of you once we were on the ground below."

"Yeah, whatever, Porky." Ranma made a come-hither gesture, putting on an insulting smirk. "We're on the ground now. Go ahead and 'take care of me'."

Ryoga acquired his own twisted, painful grin. "Since you ask so nicely..." With no further warning, he dropped to one knee and slammed both his palms flat against the ground. "GRAVEYARD SHIFT!"

Ranma gaped. "Wha—" His incredulity morphed into horror in the span of one second flat—all the time it took for him to sink up to his waist in the suddenly-liquid earth. "What the _hell_?!" He tried to jump free, but could find no purchase. Remembering his father's advanced swimming practice, and the quicksand in which the training had been carried out, he tried to work his way toward the closest edge of road, which would hopefully be safe. The ground seemed to mock his efforts, shifting randomly and rapidly from thicker to thinner consistencies. All his movements managed to accomplish was to sink him deeper.

"Ryoga, damn it!" he shouted as the earth rose to the level of his armpits. "Are you really tryin' to kill me?!"

"No, Ranma," the Lost Boy replied quietly. "I'm better than that. But I am going to give you what you deserve." He gave one last grimace of concentration. Ranma felt the ground around him harden to the consistency of thick, gluey, nearly-cooled fudge. But at the same time it solidified further under his feet, giving him at least a little reassurance that he was no longer in danger of live burial.

"So what do you think of my new technique?" The anger seemed to be gone from Ryoga's voice now. He straightened up to his feet, brushing away the dust from his hands. "It's the reason I was back in town, you know. Just wanted it to be another challenge, like we've had so many times before. I learn something new and kick your butt, then you come back and pull off a cheap win with some kind of trick. Same old same old, right? Instead I get Shampoo dumping your little gift over me, and then I get you ripping apart every bit of my self-respect. And through it all the great Ranma Saotome just dances along without ever being touched, laughing at everybody and doing just what he wants. Well, not this time."

"I'm trying to do what I think is right, you bastard!" Harder words than he'd ever used with Ryoga, but Ranma was really not doing too well just then. As if being three-quarters buried wasn't enough, the familiar heavy chi of depression was poisoning the air around him... and if he could feel it this strongly with Ryoga standing so far away, that could only mean his opponent was going to go all out with the attack. Ranma could at least try to block a horizontal blastwith his Moko Takabisha, but there was no way Ryoga was going to limit himself to such half-measures in his current state.

"Right? Right for you, maybe. Best for you, sure. But don't try and play the hero, Ranma—you never said any of that stuff to me before." Ryoga's eyes locked with Ranma's. The pigtailed teen would have stepped backward, had that been any sort of option. "If you... if you'd even tried... I never did see it, maybe I never let myself see it. But you only bother to show it to me when you're trying to justify what Shampoo did to me for you. Don't give me any kind of crap about you doing what's right."

"It's not like that," Ranma protested weakly, unable to find the words that could explain how everything really was, and knowing in the back of his mind that no words would have reached Ryoga in this state.

Ryoga didn't dignify that with a response. Instead, he slowly and steadily walked forward, stopping once he was five feet away from Ranma's sunken form. He knelt down again to better look his opponent in the eye. "I could kill you right now, just like that. This technique is an assassin's weapon, or so the old man said. But I wanted to take it and make it better, use it for something more noble than that. And at least you won't take that away from me.

"This isn't a request. I'm not asking this time. I'm telling you, I'm demanding it. You have to start treating Akane better. No more treating her like she's worthless, no more putting her down and pushing her around and making her cry in the night." There had only been a few occasions when he'd seen those silent tears, and none of them had been all that recent, but each one was engraved indelibly in Ryoga's mind. "I won't ever be there to help her feel better again. I won't ever feel her hold me, see her smile at me, know that I'm doing something for her that nobody else bothers to. And I won't ever be able to forgive myself for what doing those things in the past also did."

The heavy aura of despair was only growing thicker with each word. Desperately Ranma focused, tuning out the remainder of the rambling account of pain. _'For sure he's gonna drop a Perfect Shi Shi Hokodan down on us. Except it won't affect him, cause that jerk is already full up of despair. It'll wash over him like water off a duck's back and hit me with everything. And with just my head sticking up out of the ground like this, not only am I gonna take the initial hit I'll get blasted with the backlash too!'_ Hard to believe that Ryoga had managed to trap him in an even worse bind than had been the case in his first clash with the final form of the move. _'Come on, think! There's gotta be some way out of this!'_

"Shi Shi Hokodan..." The words were a choked gasp of pain, rather than a battle cry. Ranma's eyes widened in fear at the sight of an even larger blast than he'd seen in the past. The massive pulse of heavy chi shot up into the air, rising higher and higher, heading inevitably toward the point where its velocity would reverse and it would begin its crushing descent. Ryoga, meanwhile, stood with head downcast and eyes closed.

_'Dammit, if only he wasn't immune to the move. He's standing close enough that if it did affect him, I'd be shielded from the worst of it by him...'_ Now the chi had reached its apex, and now it was falling again, its hue discoloring the air like sunlight filtered through stagnant scummy pond water.

"Ryoga!" The words seemed to rip themselves out of his mouth. "That water Shampoo used on you was just temporary! It'll wear off in a few more days!"

His rival's eyes shot wide open as the significance of that statement hit him. "You... you mean..."

Ranma felt his own soul shrivel at the look in those eyes. Impossible though it was to believe, Ryoga's depression had only deepened.

"So now Akane will be expecting me to have a Jusenkyo curse. And even though I can be P-chan for her, I can't ever be P-chan for her. All the curses and none of the blessings. I was wrong, Ranma," Ryoga whispered, his words somehow audible even as the Perfect Shi Shi Hokodan thundered down. "You did manage to take one more thing from me."

-----------------------

Consciousness arrived slowly, and pain came with it hand-in-hand.

"Easy there, Ranma." Who was that? The voice was one that didn't raise any alarms in his mind—which, considering how vulnerable he was right now, eliminated all but a couple of possibilities.

Groaning, Ranma forced his eyes to open and to focus. Brown hair, spectacles, a concerned face older than most people he knew and younger than the rest... "Dr. Tofu," he murmured. He didn't quite feel ready to attempt sitting up yet, but he found the energy to move his neck. Shifting his gaze away from the doctor and over what he could see of the general surroundings, he could tell he was in the chiropractor's clinic. "How'd I get here?"

"Hmm. That's a lot better response than most people make," Tofu said cheerfully. "Usually when someone wakes up from a knock-out like this, the first thing they say is 'Where am I?' "

The compliment brought the barest echo of a cocky grin to Ranma's lips. "Heh. You know me, Doc. Always gotta do the unexpected." As if to prove his words, he sat up in the bed. The next instant his grin was gone as if it had never been, his teeth clenching in pain instead. The feeling of security from being here, a reasonably safe haven as long as Kasumi Tendo was elsewhere, combined with the cheerfulness from Tofu's bedside manner, had apparently been a bit too encouraging. The movement had sapped every bit of the strength he'd felt return to him, and had left his entire body wracked with pain.

It wasn't as bad as that time he and Genma had been caught in the avalanche, but it was a fairly close second.

"Please, Ranma, take it easy. There's no permanent damage, but you took a terrible beating." Tofu had gone over his unconscious patient's chi flows three times to be sure, each time feeling just a little more awestruck that Ranma had weathered such abuse without debilitating injury.

"No joke," Ranma muttered. "Geez, this ain't fair. I was stuck in the ground up to my armpits when I got blasted with Ryoga's stupid Perfect Shi Shi Hokodan. I can see having a headache and my arms giving me grief, but the rest of my body shouldn't be hurting too. That stupid new move oughta have been worth some protection at least!"

"From what I heard, that's not how it worked out," Tofu said gravely.

"Huh?"

"I didn't see the fight myself, you understand. But apparently there were some girls from your school who saw it, or the end of it at least."

Ranma blinked, then stared in horror. _'No... no! There wasn't anybody else around, was there? Dammit, did they hear Ryoga spouting off about being P-chan?!'_

Unaware of his patient's sudden anxiety attack, Tofu continued. "They told me they got a pretty good view of what happened in the fight, but they were standing too far back to see all the details."

The pigtailed teen exhaled a sigh of relief. That meant they'd have been too far back to hear Ryoga's unfortunate admissions.

"They got there just in time to see him trap you in the ground like that, they watched him finish the fight, and then they brought you here." Tofu repressed the urge to frown at the memory. Living in Nerima was never dull, it kept his mother's visits to a minimum, and it allowed him proximity to a certain gentle goddess, but there were times when he despaired at the general cluelessness and recklessness that ran rampant throughout the district. It was one of the most basic lessons of first aid: do not move a heavily-injured person, as this could make their injuries worse. Certainly those girls had to have been taught that in the past. But faced with the chance to get their hands on the most desired boy at Furinkan, any thought of such things had flown right out the window. Tofu supposed he should be thankful that the girls had brought Ranma here, rather than taking him to one of their houses to recover.

"From what they told me about how it ended, the reason you're hurting all over is that the Shi Shi Hokodan interfered with whatever Ryoga did to the ground to trap you like that. It's not surprising, really. Chi attacks don't mix well if you don't know what you're doing, and it sounds like Ryoga didn't have any idea of what would happen. When the Shi Shi Hokodan landed, it caused the ground to explode upward and outward. That's why your whole body feels like it took a beating."

"Cause it did," Ranma agreed with a grimace. "Well, I guess it's better than him just using the first move to bury me all the way. But he sure wasn't holding back any more than that. The regular Shi Shi Hokodan woulda been more than enough." As low as his confidence had been at that moment, Ranma knew the Moko Takabisha wouldn't have been enough to stave off a horizontal blast aimed at his head. But a relatively painless knockout like that couldn't have been enough for Ryoga, could it?

"I don't think Ryoga knew the ground would explode," the doctor corrected. "The students said it caught him completely by surprise when it blew up, that it threw him into the air and well out of sight. Still, you have a point. It sounds like this fight was a lot worse than the usual around here. Ranma... what happened?"

The teenaged martial artist didn't reply for several moments. Eventually, he started out with, "I can't tell ya everything, Doc. Not the stuff about Ryoga. But a lot has changed lately."

As he listened to the ensuing explanation, Dr. Tofu fought a strong sense of disbelief. It was true that he'd seen many examples of the sort of wild chaos that swirled throughout his current patient's life, but that hadn't really prepared him now for this. The Full-Body Cat Tongue, the Ultimate Weakness Moxibustion, treating Ranma after his first loss to Ryoga's Shi Shi Hokodan... all of those had fit the pattern that Tofu had come to recognize and expect. Something new and exciting would happen in Ranma's life, and there would be frantic activity as a result—and then, after a bit of time had passed, things would go back to more or less how they were before. The most that ever changed permanently was that Ranma might pick up another rival or fiancée, and those changes didn't really make a dent in the overall dynamic of life at the Tendo home.

But this... this was real. This was permanent. Ranma successfully casting aside his old cursed form was far and away the most dramatic change Tofu had seen the boy make in his life, a change that would certainly have repercussions throughout the lives of the family that had been Tofu's friends for so long. The doctor felt a qualm of uneasiness form in the pit of his gut at the thought. Whether it was caused by an unconscious fear of something in particular, or just the natural human instinct to mistrust rapid change, he could not have said.

On the other hand, at least he no longer felt guilty about never advising Ranma to get a gynecological exam.

"And that's pretty much all I can tell ya." Ranma's face was scowling as he finished recounting everything.

It certainly wasn't difficult to see reasons for him to wear such an expression, Tofu mused. Ranma was not at all happy about Shampoo having lied to him about the water's time limit, and he was even more galled at Ryoga's recent actions. But other questions of motivation weren't quite as clear. "Are you sorry now that you changed your curse?" he asked.

"Nah, I'm not," Ranma replied, so obviously not even bothering to give it a moment's thought that Tofu had to suppress a sigh.

"Are you sure about that? How much have you really thought about it?" the doctor prodded gently. "When you were talking to me about Shampoo, it was obvious that you were unhappy about her telling you you only had a day to decide. Should it really bother you that much, if you're so sure you made the right decision?"

This question, at least, Ranma thought over long and hard. At last, speaking hesitantly, he answered. "First of all, Doc, things woulda been different with Ryoga if I knew how much time we had. But that ain't the biggest part of it. It was Shampoo who made the decision to splash Ryoga after he said he didn't want it, Shampoo who didn't give him any of the time that she knew was still left. Ryoga blamin' me for it instead is just the same old junk he always pulls.

"And that... that's kinda what I'm talking about. I think. I didn't really talk to you a lot about why I took Shampoo up on her offer in the first place. Some of it's stuff I'm not comfortable talking about here," specifically the situation with his mother, "and a lot of it I'm sure you can guess for yourself. No more idiots chasin' after my girl-half. Those are the real reasons I decided to go with this new curse. Sure, back when she was makin' the offer Shampoo gave a nice sales pitch about how great it was to fly, but that really wasn't a huge factor in why I made the decision. My biggest reason, my only real reason, was to get rid of the Nyannichuan curse.

"But after that..." He fell silent again for a while, searching for the words. "What she said about being a falcon... about flying... that stuff was all true," he eventually continued. "In fact, it was better than she'd been able to say. Same thing here, for me. I can't do justice to it, or really even describe how it is."

"It's one of Man's oldest dreams," Tofu supplied quietly, seeing that his patient was once again struggling to find speech. "And it may be the oldest and most powerful of the dreams that have always gone unfulfilled. No matter how hard we try, no matter what machines we invent, the best we can manage are things that don't come close to the kind of freedom and power that we see in the birds of the air."

"Yeah," Ranma said, speaking in the same quiet tone that Tofu had used. "You hit it right on the head when you said 'freedom'. I know you've lived in Nerima a long time, Doctor Tofu. It prob'ly ain't the same for you at all. But for me... I grew up on the road. This place was really starting to feel small and cramped. But then I get this, and suddenly everything's different. It's not a cage any longer—it's a landing pad."

The two martial artists heaved simultaneous sighs. Ranma's spoke of wonder and happiness, of an awe that had yet to fade. Tofu's was far more wistful in nature, as the older man considered this glimpse from the life of the younger, this sight of something that he personally would never experience.

Then the doctor blinked. "Wait... how does any of that tie into being angry about what Shampoo did?"

Ranma blinked as well, experiencing a moment of disorientation as his thoughts were dragged back to less pleasant matters. "Oh. Yeah. Where was I... right." His mouth thinned into a grim line. "I basically already told you that I'd've still done this even if she'd been honest about how much time there was," he explained. "She coulda told me the truth, but it's like that's too much to ask for. You know? In a way, it even makes it worse that this was such a good gift. It's..." he paused again, struggling once more for the right way to explain his confused thoughts. "It's like everything I ever get, no matter how good it is, has always got some kinda string attached or knife buried in it or something. Is that how you're supposed to act to somebody you care about?"

Tofu hesitated for a moment, then replied, "Did Akane tie any kind of string on when she helped you out, that time I paralyzed your legs so long ago?" Part of the doctor felt a little guilty, as if he were playing favorites by promoting Akane once more. But the larger part responded that reminding Ranma of what had happened then would be for the best. It was a true counterexample to the argument he'd just made, a time when Akane had done just what Ranma said nobody ever did for him. Bringing it back to his attention wasn't unfairly supporting the young man's Tendo fiancée. Any credit that occasion gave to her, she'd earned for herself.

"I don't know what to think about that time," Ranma replied slowly, causing Tofu quite a bit of surprise. "Yeah, she didn't hesitate to help me home. But she also didn't hesitate to splash me an' turn me into a girl. It didn't seem like a big deal at the time, so maybe I shouldn't harp on it now. But she didn't ask me either. So no strings attached? I don't think I can totally go along with that, Doc."

"And this gift from Shampoo—this change that you've said was such a good thing for you—you thought it was different?" Tofu guessed. "One truly great thing someone did for you, and then you find out part of it was a lie?" At Ranma's nod and sullen grimace, the doctor sighed. "I suppose I understand why you feel so badly about it."

"I... I wanted to make some changes. Change things for good." Ranma snorted. "And I mean that both ways you can take it. Change things for the better, and make them changes that would actually _last_. And you know what? A big part of why I was thinking about that was because it looked like here was something already like that! Shampoo offered this to me, and the only thing she wanted back from it was for me to be happier and for us to share that new curse between us. It felt pretty good, Doc. But then it all turns out to be another dose of the same old same old." His eyes hardened as he spoke the next words. "I'm not willing to settle for that anymore. It'd be nice if I didn't have to fight everybody for it, if even one person would at least go along with it for me. But it looks like the chances of that are pretty slim. Shampoo... Akane... Ryoga... seems like they've all decided whose side they're on. Same as it always was."

"Have you really talked to Akane about this?" Dr. Tofu persisted. "I don't believe she'd be against you so harshly."

"Ain't you listening? Yeah, I've 'talked' to Akane. We've been round and round about this thing. I'm not even saying I haven't made some progress with her on it. But that wasn't what I said!" Ranma complained. "What if I didn't have to hammer it out with her? What if she just listened to me explain it all, heard how cool it was to have this new curse instead of my old one, and could really honestly say she was happy for me? What if Shampoo had just been honest with me at first? What if Ryoga didn't take out all his frustrations on me, cause Shampoo fixed it so he couldn't keep on doing what he was doing? What if the jerk didn't actually get in my face and chew me out for not stopping him sooner?!" He practically spat those final words out of his mouth.

_'I really would like to help get him in a better mood than this,' _Tofu thought sadly. He ran the story Ranma had given him back through his mind, trying to piece it all together into a coherent whole. The younger Saotome's talents as a raconteur were somewhat lacking; he'd backtracked, left out important things, interrupted himself, and struggled to talk around, without actually revealing, whatever dishonorable thing Shampoo had ended by inflicting a falcon curse on Ryoga.

"One thing I still don't understand is just why Shampoo told you the water only had a few days left," he wondered. "You never did explain that."

"Ain't it obvious?" Ranma demanded. "She wanted to pressure me into grabbing it!"

"That could be... but doesn't it bother you a little? I mean, you've said yourself how good it is to have this curse. You also said that Shampoo tried to tell you just that," Tofu mused. He wasn't quite sure himself where he was going with this line of thought, but something definitely seemed off. "What if she had told you how long you really had? That just means more time for her to convince you of what she already knew was the truth." Noting the stubbornness of Ranma's expression increasing exponentially as he spoke the last sentence, Tofu hurried past the unfortunate choice of words. "I mean, it seems like it was more of a risk for her to only give you a couple of days."

"Maybe you're right." The admission didn't seem to have improved Ranma's mood—quite the opposite in fact. The reason for this was made clear as he continued. "Maybe that's just how it happened. When she admitted to me that she lied about how long the water would last, she said it was a 'mistake'. She prob'ly thought like I thought she did at first, that pushing it would be more likely to get me to go along with it. And afterward she realized she'd been wrong, and that's why she said what she did."

Dr. Tofu sighed. Something still bugged him ever so slightly about that explanation, but he had to admit that it was quite possible. From what he'd observed of Shampoo while providing her with shelter during her first stay in Nerima, the girl could be too impulsive for her own good. He didn't think continuing along this line of conversation was going to do anything to raise his patient's spirits, and so he sought for other possible silver linings.

"What about Ukyo?" the chiropractor asked suddenly. He had heard about the girl from both Ranma and Akane, but hadn't ever met her. Because of this, she wasn't more than a vague awareness in the back of his mind that there were multiple girls with official Japanese honor claims to Ranma Saotome. "How has she taken all this?"

"I don't know," Ranma replied, an answer which did not in itself make much sense. Before Tofu could point this out, he continued, "She's outta town right now. But she's supposed to get back in time for school on Monday, so I guess we'll find out before too much longer." He fell silent for a little while, his expression now thoughtful rather than stony or bitter—which gave Tofu a bit of satisfaction. "It might go pretty well there," Ranma murmured at last, speaking more to himself than the room's other occupant. "She's probably got the blue ribbon for 'best first reaction to seeing a Jusenkyo curse'. Maybe she'll stick to her record this time too." He grinned ever so slightly. "That's one piece of history I wouldn't mind repeating itself."

-----------------------

_'I knew Dr Tofu was being too careful when he said I oughta stay home from Furinkan today. But I'm glad he did,'_ Ranma thought with quite a bit of satisfaction. The sharp pains of yesterday had faded overnight to a faint aching echo. It was nothing that would have kept him from doing something that he wanted to, but attending class at Furinkan, even for only a Saturday half-day, wasn't about to fall into that category. Ranma was perfectly content to use the doctor's orders as an excuse to stay away from the school today. _'Probably oughta drop by his place this afternoon and thank him,'_ he decided. _'But I think I'll keep quiet about what I actually did with the free morning he bought me.'_

He flexed the tips of his wings down through a two-degree arc, altering his flight to avoid an imminent downdraft.

For quite a long time after that, all deliberate thought stayed well clear of his mind. The lingering pain from yesterday was nowhere near enough to distract him from the fierce rush of joy and freedom. Ranma rode the wind, now higher, now lower, feeling the sun caress his feathers and the air carry him along.

Still, he eventually had to face the fact that Dr Tofu's caution had been wiser than he'd first thought. His stamina was significantly less than it usually was, and the joyful aeronautics he'd been doing were draining it quickly. Feeling himself tire so much more rapidly than normal was a bit aggravating, but Ranma simply adjusted his flight into a long slow restful glide. It was probably just as well, he realized. These times of flight were proving to be the best opportunities he had—the best he'd _ever_ had—for thinking things over. And with all the things that had happened recently, he could certainly use some time to contemplate it all.

His thoughts settled first on Akane. He wondered whether she'd have been glad for him or aggravated, had she known what he was up to right now. She had seemed more relieved than anything else that Ranma wasn't going to accompany her to Furinkan today, even happy to take the note Dr Tofu had given him to be delivered to the school nurse. _'Can't believe she's still so worried about Kuno and his latest stupid idea,' _Ranma thought to himself. It was aggravating, but truth be told it felt kind of nice too, that she should be so concerned for him. It'd be even better if the tomboy could start applying a reaction like that when it really counted—for example, feeling sorry for him instead of flattening him when a new fiancée showed up—but Ranma wasn't going to hold his breath.

He still wasn't sure what to make of the events of late yesterday, when Akane had learned the outcome of his battle with Ryoga. This was mostly due to the fact that at the time he'd been in no condition to concentrate on her and really get a feel for how she had taken it. She'd been quiet, not saying much to him either, although Ranma thought he'd detected some sympathy for him, and perhaps just a little bit of worry. _'Figures she'd be more worried about Kuno having it in for me than Ryoga, though,'_ he thought sourly. _'That tomboy wouldn't think Ryoga was a real threat if he was coming at me from inside a tank.'_

Of course, Ryoga inside a tank would actually be less dangerous than Ryoga armed with his latest and greatest new move. _'How the heck does he keep stumbling over these things anyway? He wanders off on a stupid training journey, just trying to polish up his usual skills, and he blunders right into somebody ready and willing to teach him dangerous new techniques? There's no justice,'_ Ranma grumbled to himself. _'With his direction sense, he oughta be the last person on the threat list, not right at the top of it.'_

Thinking of how things ought to be didn't do anything to change how they actually were. Ryoga was still out there, still armed with a technique that it would be extremely hard to counter, and still undoubtedly angry enough to use it. In fact, by the time the Lost Boy found his way back again, he would probably be angrier and more ready for battle than ever. Ranma considered that fact for a while, his thoughts circling round and round one particular reason to believe his rival's enmity would have worsened. He hadn't let himself touch directly on it yet, but here and now, eighteen hours after the fact, he finally decided it was time to face it head-on.

_'I wish I hadn't said it.'_ It was barely a mental whisper. _'It only made things worse. I thought it would shock him out of that funk, but all it did was push him farther down. Ryoga you dummy, can't you make up your mind about anything? Are you mad about getting the new curse instead of your old one or ain't you?_

_'But... '_ Ranma closed his eyes for a moment. _'But what if it had worked just like I thought it would? What if telling him that really had made him all happy again, so that the Shi Shi Hokodan would've blasted him worse than me? It wouldn't have made any difference in the fight. That thing hitting him wouldn't've helped me after all; the ground still would've exploded when the chi from the two attacks got mixed up. I still would've been knocked out. So maybe he would have too?'_

"What the heck kinda difference is that supposed to make?" Ranma demanded of the heavens, opening his eyes and his beak at the same time. "So I might've been able to get a draw in the fight, instead of losing. Is that supposed to make it all right?"

Wind whistled around him. Sunlight glinted off clouds. The heavens didn't bother to answer.

Nor had he wanted them to, nor had he needed it. Ranma exhaled a sigh, inaudible to his ears over the breath of the wind. '_No. It wasn't all right. It wouldn't've been all right even if it worked just like I thought it would, if Ryoga getting hit had been enough for me to pull off the win. It wasn't right at all.' _He couldn't grit his teeth or clench his fists at the moment, so he settled for screwing his eyes shut again. _'What's gonna happen now? Is he ever even gonna try out his new cursed form? He thinks it's not permanent, so why would he? Heck, he might even think of what Shampoo told me back when all this started, and be scared that if his new curse wore off while he was flying and he got rained on, he'd turn back into P-chan to fall a mile and splatter on the ground._

_'But it seems like now he did realize the new one is better than the old one. I just don't think he knows how much better. And with things the way they are now, is he ever gonna be able to figure it out? Why'd I have to say that anyway? Dammit, Shampoo, if you hadn't lied to me in the first place about the water turning temporary I wouldn't even have thought of it!'_

Ranma flew in bitter silence for a while, but eventually remorse replaced the anger. _'No. That ain't right. Well, it's probably right that I wouldn't've thought of it without her, but it ain't right to blame her. I was the one who made the mistake this time. I was the one who busted out with a lie when I thought it was gonna do me some good.'_ This time his sigh was loud enough for him to hear it. _'Ryoga talked a lot of junk back then in the fight, but this time I can't just push it all away as garbage. He did say one thing that I guess is kinda true: him being wrong didn't make me right. What I did... that final 'Saotome desperation technique'... it was wrong. I shoulda just taken the hit like a man, and kicked his butt in the rematch._

_'Damn, this isn't going to be much fun, facing him again. I'm going to have to eat a lot of crow. And knowing Ryoga, it may not make any difference at all.'_ It made a particularly unappealing mental image, but one that he could picture all too easily—himself approaching in honest remorse, making an apology as best he could, and Ryoga throwing the offering back in his face. Chances were that was exactly how it would happen, even if he was able to approach Ryoga with a peace token of more waterproof soap–

A sudden shudder of realization jolted through him. Ranma lost nearly a hundred feet of altitude before he could make his frozen muscles work again.

He knew now why it was so easy to imagine Ryoga sneering and turning away from his offered words of regret.

-----------------------

The second period bell had rung, but Nabiki Tendo's desk was empty. She had waited in class just long enough for the teacher to arrive, given him her best predatory smile, informed him that she and her friends were not to be marked absent today, and then left with Manami and Junko trailing behind her. Junko had paused to give Mr. Itokimoshi a cheerful wave, secure in the knowledge that even if the sensei knew it was she who had obtained the photos that provided such wonderful leverage over him, he'd never dare to do anything about it.

Nabiki's smile had been nothing more than a mask worn for her victim's sake, one that she discarded the second she was out of the room. In silence she led the way through the halls, up the stairs, and onto the roof, and once both girls had joined her she locked the door behind them.

"So, Nabiki. What's up?" Manami asked. Her boss wasn't nearly as closed-off or as intense as she had been a week and a day ago, when she'd first told Manami and Junko about Ranma Saotome's lifestyle change. That was good, as far as it went, but this occasion had one less-than-optimum thing in common with that previous time: Nabiki wasn't showing any signs of satisfaction whatsoever. Given the fact that she had felt it necessary to throw her weight around with a teacher—something the Boss only did in exceptional circumstances—Manami figured that whatever this was, it wasn't going to qualify as tidings of great joy. What seemed most likely was that something had changed, and Nabiki didn't know yet whether it was a good or a bad change.

The middle Tendo opened her bookbag, fished out a package wrapped in brown paper, and dropped the satchel to the ground. "This arrived today," she began without preamble. "Daddy usually gets the mail, but since he's gone right now I volunteered to do it so Kasumi wouldn't have yet another chore dumped on her. I think I'll keep the job even after he gets back; it makes it a lot easier to intercept interesting things."

Moving a few steps closer and craning her neck around, Junko made out the addressing of the paper. "To Ranma, from Shampoo. Hoo boy. Be careful when you open that, Nabiki."

"Careful?" Nabiki repeated, giving Junko an ironic look. "This is definitely Shampoo's handwriting, Junko, not Mousse trying to disguise his as hers. And anyway I already told you he's out of the country right now. Left last weekend." A curious expression of annoyance flitted briefly across her face as she said that. Before either subordinate could remark on this, Nabiki continued. "There's certainly not a bomb in there."

"That isn't what I meant," Junko explained. "You told us Ranma got really mad at Shampoo. She's got to want to get back on his good side; what if that's rigged to spray a love potion or something as soon as he opens it?"

Nabiki stared down at the package in her hands in sudden alarm. Manami, who was standing a safe distance away, just snorted. "What possible reason would Shampoo have to do that? It's not like she was going to be there to catch his eye when he opened the thing."

"And besides," Nabiki said briskly, her composure recovered, "if she had access to love potions she would have used them by now. No, I'm willing to bet that this is just an apology and more waterproof soap to replace the bars he lost earlier. But you were right in a different way, Junko," she said magnanimously, settling down on the rooftop and flipping the parcel over. It was sealed with clear tape, which made things easier than it might have been. "Depending on what's in here, it may be that the best thing to do is pass it all along to Ranma unharmed. But we can't say for sure until we know exactly what she sent, so I'd better not make it obvious that it's already been opened."

Several minutes of careful work later, Nabiki lifted the edge of the paper and pulled out a letter. Setting this aside for the moment, she peered through the opening at the remaining contents of the package. "Looks like two bars of waterproof soap, all right," the middle Tendo said in tones of self-satisfaction.

"Well, you certainly don't want _that _to get to him," Junko replied.

"Yes, but that doesn't mean it'll be safe to sit on it," Manami explained, saving Nabiki the trouble. "Shampoo put this in the mail, and she's lived around here long enough to know how serious the Nerima Postal Service is about completing all deliveries." Ever since the position of Postmaster General had been taken over by the grandmaster of Martial Arts Mail Delivery, and it had become a matter of honor and pride as well as of duty. "If this doesn't get through to Ranma, she'll know about it, and want to know why. Especially since she'll be able to find out that it was delivered to the Tendo home at least."

"Exactly," Nabiki said, her eyes fastened on the letter as she carefully unfolded it. "I can delay it a little while, pick just the right time to pass it along to Ranma. If Ryoga shows up again soon enough, I may even be able to rig things so that it gets destroyed in a way that looks innocent. But I'm not about to risk pushing too far and exposing myself to the Amazons."

"I still worry about that a little," Manami admitted, speaking in a low voice despite the impossibility of anyone being near enough to overhear. During the minutes Nabiki had taken in opening the package Manami had been thinking things over, and she had realized just why Nabiki had seemed irritated earlier at the fact that Mousse was out of town. "Didn't you already risk that? When you took Ranma's soap and left that feather behind to frame Mousse. He couldn't be guilty if he'd already left town."

Nabiki just shook her head. "I cut it a lot closer than I'd have ever done by choice, but it's okay. He still had a short window of opportunity, and even if he would have had to bust his butt to pull it off, there's no way in the world anybody is going to believe him when he says he didn't do it." She exhaled a sigh of mingled relief and aggravation. "I'm just glad he didn't leave a day earlier than he did. If that had happened it would have been obvious that he couldn't have been the one responsible, and it's possible I would have been caught. I think you can see why I'm being more careful now."

Junko nodded her head. "And the more information we have, the better plans we can make. What's the letter say?"

"I haven't started reading it yet. I've been scanning over it, getting first impressions. It's obviously something Shampoo put a lot of effort into," Nabiki replied absently, finally beginning the task of actually reading the letter's contents. "Didn't think she could manage Japanese this good even if it was written rather than spoken... it probably took her at least a couple of days to compose this..."

The middle Tendo fell silent then. Manami and Junko watched as she worked her way through the missive, queasiness growing in the pits of their stomachs as Nabiki's face grew more and more to resemble the mask of a corpse. Eventually she finished, wordlessly extending the letter for Manami and Junko to read.

The girls did so, Junko peering over Manami's shoulder. They took as long to finish as Nabiki had, giving the same careful consideration to the letter, chewing over its contents and considering the implications of everything Shampoo had revealed there.

"This is bad, Boss," Manami said at last.

"Bad?" Nabiki gave a hacking laugh. "Quite a gift for understatement you've got there."

"No kidding," Junko breathed. "This... all this..." She gestured helplessly at the letter, still clutched in Manami's hand. "She put so much into there, so much about how she feels for him, how sorry she is for the mistakes she's made and what she's willing to do to make up for them... if Ranma sees this, it's bound to make him start feeling a lot better about her!"

"Who gives a damn about Ranma's feelings?!" Nabiki snapped. "That's nowhere near the real threat here, Junko!"

"It's not?" Junko's shoulders slumped ever so slightly. Often she wished she had Nabiki's or Manami's quick wit, sometimes even to the point where she would be willing to give up the skills she possessed and they didn't if that was what it took to get it.

"I'm not seeing it, Boss," Manami confessed. "I just thought the same as Junko did." The other girl perked up noticeably, or at least it would have been noticeable if Nabiki and Manami hadn't been too preoccupied to see.

"Read between the lines, why don't you," Nabiki growled. "Shampoo originally told Ranma he only had a couple of days to use the water. Why?" She stalked over to Manami and her finger lashed out, pointing to the relevant passage in the letter. "Because she believed it was true! Because what she did had been against Amazon law, and she figured the old woman would eventually figure it out and take the water away if Ranma still hadn't used it by then.

"But note that tense. 'Had been'—past perfect." Nabiki gave another humorless laugh. "Perfect for their plans, I guess. This very same trip home, Cologne forces through a change in the law. A change that I suspect will get her lots and lots of goodwill among the young Amazons, a change that made it perfectly okay to do what Shampoo did."

"I see it now," Manami stated. "The most important thing this says isn't about Shampoo at all. It's her great-grandmother. A big change like that, with this particular timing... I guess it shows how serious she is this time. Shampoo by herself is no big deal, but if Cologne is backing her for real and is ready to go all out in supporting her..."

"I'm very glad Ukyo will be back in town on Monday," Nabiki replied. "It'll be much safer to use her to disrupt the Amazons' plans. I don't think I can afford to try that with Akane anymore. Not after this." Sometime yesterday her little sister had finally put together the pieces of the puzzle that Nabiki had oh-so-casually introduced to her over the course of four careful conversations. Akane genuinely believed it was her own idea to have Nabiki procure more soap for her fiancé, but it had been the middle Tendo's inspiration from the very day she'd 'acquired' Ranma's first stash. Akane was going to pay for, receive, and pass along four bars of soap, but Nabiki was only going to have to send away for one. It had been quite a satisfying thought; she would be able to dispose of the hot commodity perfectly safely, in the most amusing and profitable way possible.

That plan should still work, but Nabiki no longer felt like it was safe to try using Akane in any sort of offensive strategy. Little sister's utility from now on would have to be to provide a choice more attractive than anything the Amazons could scrounge up, to act generously and above all _consistently_ for Ranma's comfort, support, and happiness. Nabiki tried not to think about the difficulty of pruning a bonsai with hedge clippers.

Meanwhile, Junko was speaking. "It sure was a bad time for Ukyo to go out of town on that visit," she observed ruefully. "The Amazons got back just a couple of days after she left."

"Please, Junko, you're making the mirror image of a mistake my little sister already made." Junko blanched at the thought of being as muddleheaded as Nabiki had always described her sister, and resolved not to say anything else in this conversation without being absolutely sure of herself. "Way back when all this started, Akane was positively certain that Shampoo timed this all to mesh with Daddy and Mr. Saotome being out of town, even though the reason they were gone was Happosai dragged them away on a spur-of-the-moment training trip. The Amazons were long gone before he did that, but that didn't even occur to her.

"But it's exactly the other way around with Ukyo. She told Ranma weeks ahead of time that she was going to be going on this family visit. I'll be _very_ surprised if that wasn't the reason for Shampoo, or should I say Cologne, setting her own timetable."

Silence fell, and stretched for several minutes. Eventually, Manami broke it, gesturing with the letter toward the package that still held its cargo of genuine protective magic. "What are we going to do now? With this, with everything?"

"Give me time," Nabiki returned. "I'm thinking."

-----------------------

There were many good things about Mousse being gone just now, Shampoo reminded herself. Had he still been there, he would undoubtedly have made this situation with Ranma even worse, either by confronting him for 'hurting my Shampoo, you bastard!', or by trying to seize the opportunity and crowd her even more than he usually did. Either one would have been a wholly unnecessary added level of pain, and Shampoo frankly felt she was already suffering more than enough of that.

But maybe it wouldn't last too much longer. Writing that letter had been one of the most arduous things she'd ever done, a labor so different from the usual focus of her life. It had taken so much time and effort to get it right, and it had been so much of a relief to finally drop the parcel into the mailbox. She would not have believed that waiting for results would prove an even greater strain, but less than six hours later she had been forced to recognize this as truth.

Today was the earliest day the precious package might be delivered to her Airen, and Shampoo forced herself to recall Cologne's warning that Ranma probably wouldn't react immediately to it anyway. Ranma wasn't one to hasten in matters of the heart, the Matriarch had pointed out in that dry tone that always gave Shampoo flashbacks to the endless lectures of her early childhood. The boy would surely take some time after reading the letter to process what it had said, a matter of time more likely measurable in days rather than hours. Her great-grandmother's warning wasn't enough to shred the wistful fantasy she held of Ranma reading the letter and immediately rushing over to reciprocate the feelings she'd poured onto its pages, but it was enough to keep it tamped down in the back of Shampoo's mind.

In a way, Mousse being gone helped with that as well. Without him around to take a share of the work, running the restaurant became a task arduous enough to keep most of her mind focused solely on the tasks of the immediate present, especially during the always-hectic lunch rush.

Speaking of which, Shampoo reminded herself, today's was almost upon her. The lunch crowd on Saturday tended to be less intense than the five days before it, but more than made up for this by lasting much longer. It would not do to get too behind in her tasks, certainly not through inattentiveness caused by wistful, wishful thoughts. Great-Grandmother would have many things to say about that, none of them pleasant.

On that note she slipped quickly into the kitchen, mindful of the fact that there were trash bags needing to be taken out for disposal. Cologne gave her a barely perceptible nod, signifying that the Matriarch agreed with her that now was a good time for this and would cover anything that happened in the dining room while Shampoo was outside. She tied off and gathered up the various bags, passed outside, dumped them into the receptacle two blocks down the street, and hurried back toward the restaurant.

The water balloon that splashed down on her caught her completely by surprise.

This time there was no graceful, apparently-effortless extrication from her clothes for the transformed Amazon. She flapped, floundered, and struggled her way out of the pantsuit, shock turning quickly to outrage. So the neighborhood kids had moved up from water pistols, had they? Damn the way water was attracted to you when you had a Jusenkyo curse, and double-damn the reduced situational awareness of incoming liquid. If there was a way to keep all aspects of her curse except those, she'd go for it in a heartbeat. It was so humiliating to be caught unawares by city-bred Japanese brats with no training and even less potential.

The avian Amazon was shaken from these thoughts by the sound of another splash—once you'd already been transformed, it was easy enough to be aware of any additional cold water—one that, oddly enough, had come from above her. She craned her head up, peering to the rooftop of the Cat Café.

A storm-blue and steel-grey head peeked back at her. With a shock exponentially greater than that of her sudden transformation, Shampoo recognized her wayward husband.

Neither transformed teen spoke immediately. At last, though, Ranma cleared his throat and said, "Hey, Shampoo. Back when you first gave me this, I... I said we oughta fly together sometime." Another pause, another oddly human-sounding noise of hesitation, then he continued, "You wanna do that now?"

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Author's notes

If it's not obvious by now, I disapprove very strongly of Ryoga's masquerade as P-chan. That doesn't mean I condemn him as soundly as many other authors do; Ranma is speaking with my voice when he says Ryoga's actions weren't the same as Mikado Sanzenin's, that he knows the Lost Boy really does care about Akane. But Ryoga's feelings for Akane, and the fact that I don't believe he realizes how wrong what he's doing really is, in no way justify him using his cursed form to trick her into letting him cuddle up with her in bed.

The P-chan situation is one in which _everyone_ involved is in the wrong to one extent or another. If I had to pick one person as worthy of the most censure and scorn, it would be Soun Tendo. What kind of father lets his daughter be taken advantage of like that? And if Soun is under the impression that Akane knows the truth about P-chan and is having a fling with him, where then is the honor of his pledge to see her and Ranma married? Although I have seen one person use the perspective that Soun had been drinking when he saw Ryoga change those two time, and thought it was just a dream inspired by the sake. If that's true, and _only_ if that's true, I would let him off the hook.

If Ranma ½ were a different genre, more of a drama and less of a comedy, these are issues that would have to have been explored at some point (and I'd like to give a nod here to Nemesis Zero, who in his fic Into Every Life A Little Rain Must Fall made the observation that events which seem funny to outside observers can be far more painful for those actually living through them). Because the original series is a comedy, we have running gags of things that never get resolved, never even get faced squarely. Here in my story that is not how things will go. Ranma is beginning to see the problem with not facing down his problems, and is changing the way he approaches his life. Hence his poignant declaration to Tofu (at least, it was supposed to be poignant): "I wanted to make some changes. Change things for good."

Speaking of changes, I hope people aren't too disappointed in the level of character development, or rather of character growth, exhibited by Akane in this chapter. I know I basically promised big stuff with the scenes in the previous chapter, and all I can say is that it will take time for me to work through everything I have plannd to do with, for, and to her.

Acknowledgements for this chapter: thanks to Beer-Monster, Nemesis Zero, and Ed Simons for prereading. Kuno's Shakespearean quote is, once again, from Love's Labor's Lost courtesy of the bartleby(dot)com website for famous quotations. Two things in this chapter are inspired from other fanfics I've read; the first is the idea of Kuno using The Wizard of Oz as inspiration to splash Ranma (although in that story that really was why he did it, not just what Ranma thought was his reason). Can't remember which story it was where I read this. And the idea that Ranma considers it a 'practice fight' when he loses due to being caught off-guard by something was fleshed out more thoroughly by D. B. Sommer in The Things We Wish For (and I should probably acknowledge that Ranma's 'Fist of Divine Retribution' attack bears some resemblance to one Kachiko used against Ranma in that story, though I only realized it awhile after I wrote my scene).


	4. After the Rain Has Fallen

Dream of the Earthbound

A Ranma ½ fanfic by Aondehafka

Disclaimer: the Ranmaverse characters owned by Rumiko Takahashi, and all that obligatory stuff. This story based on the anime, not the manga.

Note: due to QuickEdit problems, which seem to be getting worse and worse as time goes by, I am now forced to use 'Pchan' to refer to Ryoga's old cursed form. QuickEdit apparently can't handle that hyphen. I am also using hypens to denote -sound effects- and -Mandarin-.

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Chapter 4: After the Rain Has Fallen

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Akane's breath slid easily in and out of her lungs, a slower rhythm than the beat her legs pounded against the sidewalk. She breathed in the Sunday morning air, pleasantly cool and refreshing against the light sweat raised by her jog. These were one of the few stretches of quiet time the youngest Tendo had, and she usually enjoyed them quite a bit.

Today's run had proved less enjoyable than some, but Akane wasn't complaining; she was still in a better mood than had been usual lately. She thought back over the various good things that had happened in the past few days. Best of all was the fact that Ranma hadn't gone crawling back to Shampoo, nor had the Amazon come by the Tendo home to press her suit and herself on him again. Then there was the inspiration Akane had had, to get Nabiki to acquire more waterproof soap for Ranma and Ryoga, a plan to which her older sister had agreed the day before yesterday. Then again there was the fact that Ranma had showed enough sense not to go back to school yesterday. Akane still felt a little surprised when she thought about it; she had fully expected him to go charging back to face Kuno, completely ignoring how doing so would be asking for disaster.

Of course, it appeared that the reason he'd refrained was so he could do a different stupid thing, and go out flying when Dr. Tofu had declared him too injured to attend school. When Akane had gotten home from the Saturday half-day of classes and heard the news from Kasumi, she had been more worried than she'd ever admit. But Ranma had eventually winged his way home, safe and sound even if he was stiff, sore, and weary from the exertion. So even though it had been a stupid thing to do, there apparently hadn't been any permanent consequences. Which certainly wouldn't have been the case if he had gone back to Furinkan and been splashed in full view of everybody.

There was another reason Akane was happy and relieved—the outcome of the fight between Ranma and Ryoga. On Friday, after the two had disappeared over the rooftops, she had stomped back home and unleashed all her aggravation on various unfortunate training dummies and sets of bricks. The anger at being left behind unable to follow them, as well as at herself for the stupid indecision that had held her frozen silent and missing any chance to intervene, had taken quite a while to work out. And once she'd done so, Akane realized her mistake. Once the anger was gone, there was nothing left to distract her from fear and uncertainty. Not just one, but _both_ of the boys fighting had a terrible handicap, and that meant the chances were either doubled or four times greater (she wasn't quite sure which, that was one mathematical principal she'd never mastered) that a mistake would leave someone terribly hurt or worse.

But it hadn't happened. As it turned out, keeping silent and letting everything proceed as it did had been the right thing to do, which was an enormous relief to Akane. Ranma had been pummeled to submission, battered to unconsciousness, but that was all. Ryoga hadn't even been hurt, from what details she'd been able to get from Dr. Tofu. He'd helped Ranma home the evening before last, and stayed behind to discuss things after Ranma limped off toward his room. Akane had been able to get a good bit of the story from him before Kasumi showed up and left the good doctor more debilitated than the patient he'd so recently treated.

Akane let her thoughts shift away from Ranma to Ryoga. She was glad that he hadn't won by triggering Ranma's curse, although truth be told she would have been very surprised if he had. It would have been much easier to credit Ranma with resorting to such means to secure the win. He hadn't either, and that also made her feel happy. The youngest Tendo found herself hoping that this fight would have cleared the air between the two rivals, at least somewhat. In all honesty, somewhere along the line she'd found herself forced to admit that Ranma had a point, and that she shouldn't blame him nearly as much as she did Shampoo for inflicting that curse on Ryoga. Part of Akane still felt like the blame should be split fifty/fifty, but by now the majority of her was considering seventy-five/twenty-five a more reasonable conclusion. And since it wasn't nearly as much Ranma's fault as Shampoo's, maybe this victory would be enough to work out the worst of whatever resentment Ryoga felt for Ranma over this.

_'I hope so,'_ she thought to herself, feeling a sudden dimming of her mood. _'Poor Ryoga. How is he going to cope with this anyway? It's different for Ranma. He has a home, a place to live and people to look out for him. Ryoga doesn't have any of that. I'd help him if I could, but he gets lost so often it almost isn't even possible. It wouldn't surprise me if he hasn't even showed up again by the time Ranma's worked his way through both bars of soap I asked Nabiki to get for him. I better make sure she knows not to let Ranma know there's another two bars waiting for Ryoga. It'd be terrible if it was already gone by the time he finally finds his way back here.'_

Akane's mood continued to darken with each step she took, leaving behind the happiness and satisfaction she'd felt only moments before and sliding quickly into sadness and melancholy. _'It just isn't fair. Ryoga's a nice guy, probably the nicest one I know, and life just keeps on dumping on him. It isn't enough that he spends so much time lost. Now he gets stuck with a horrible curse like that, turning into something small and weak and defenseless. All because Shampoo didn't want him to have an advantage over Ranma!'_

That last thought should have sparked a comfortable rising surge of anger. Instead, it felt like the spark winked out before it could ignite, swallowed up in the ever-increasing levels of sadness. _'Why does it have to be like this... why can't there be a way to make things right...'_ As the feeling of burden grew, Akane stumbled to a stop, seating herself on a convenient bench. It felt like the weight of the entire world was pressing on her. Sitting brought no relief, either; if anything, the oppressive sensation just continued to build.

And then, with an earsplitting -crack, it lessened noticeably.

The shock was enough to bring her to her feet and whirl her around. There was a wall there, a wall with a locked gate in it a little ways down the street. Akane hurried to this and looked through the gap, finding that the wall enclosed an abandoned lot. Inside she could see the remains of a long-ruined building, probably one that been destroyed in her father's youth (perhaps even by him, if the few stories he'd told were true, and Nerima really always had been a proving ground for crazy high-powered martial arts battles).

Of much more importance to her, though, was the sight of the lot's lone occupant. He was standing only a few feet away from her, head downcast, shoulders slumped, radiating such misery that Akane didn't hesitate a moment before breaking the lock on the gate and hurrying through it. "Ryoga?" she said tentatively as she came up behind him. "What's wrong?"

On another day, the Lost Boy might have jumped, spun around, laughed nervously, and stuttered a reply with half-frozen vocal chords. Here and now, he just turned slowly and deliberately. "Akane," he murmured on catching sight of her. "So I'm still in Nerima. Or back in Nerima. Or something like that."

"What's wrong?" Akane repeated, her concern and worry for him replacing her mysterious early sadness. "Why are you so down? You beat Ranma, right? Shouldn't you be a little happy about that?"

"That's right. I did." He said it with no trace of satisfaction at all. "Want to see how?"

"Um... okay," Akane replied hesitantly, already at a loss for words. Why was Ryoga reacting like this? More importantly, how was she supposed to handle the situation?

"It goes like this." Ryoga turned thirty degrees away from her and got down on one knee, placing his hands on the ground and staring forward to a point all the way on the other side of the lot, targeting a chunk of broken concrete about the size of Genma's cursed form. Akane stared in awe as the ground beneath it suddenly slurped the thing down, swallowing ninety-five percent of it in what seemed like the blink of an eye.

Her sense of wonder faded swiftly, though, and she could feel her concern and worry for him beginning to fade as well, buried under another rising wave of sorrow. As Ryoga straightened up the feeling increased, leaving Akane trembling and weak and on the verge of tears. Then his hands snapped forward, chi coalescing between then and shooting out. The Shi Shi Hokodan impacted the ground right before the submerged iceberg of concrete. Immediately the earth shattered with a roar and disgorged a cloud of dust, rubble, and debris, leaving nothing of his original target larger than fist-sized chunks.

"Two new moves for the price of one," Ryoga muttered, not bothering to turn back and look at her. "The Graveyard Shift makes the earth open its mouth like the grave, to swallow something whole. Cut it off before you've actually got your target all the way under and hit it with a Shi Shi Hokodan, and the chi of the two attacks blows up a whole lot better than the Bakkusai Tenketsu ever could. I think I'll call the combo Chain of Despair."

"Ryoga." About a minute back, Akane had finally figured something out. Ryoga's most powerful chi ability was based on depression, and he was apparently feeling it strongly enough to radiate it outward. That was why she had been feeling such inexplicable sadness. It had lessened once again after the release of Ryoga's chi blast, but it hadn't disappeared entirely. Still, her fear was strong enough to displace this reduced level of sorrow. "Why are you hurting like this? You beat Ranma! You're supposed to be happy right now!"

"Should I be? What good did it do?" Ryoga turned to face her, moving as if the effort required was almost more than the remains of his strength could bear. "So I beat him. So what? It was so easy, it didn't mean anything. I could do it again, no problem at all. What would be the point?"

"What do you mean?" Akane asked, disbelief obvious in her voice and her eyes. "Maybe it was more Shampoo's fault, but Ranma still deserves some of the blame for getting you this curse. You challenged him because of that, and you beat him better than almost anyone ever has! Didn't you do that to make up for getting cursed?"

Ryoga just shrugged. "Ranma said it wasn't permanent after all. That the water Shampoo used would wear off in a few more days." Later, he would realize that that had been a truly stupid admission. But at the moment such clarity of foresight was beyond him.

The shock from this statement was so great that for a moment Akane couldn't think, speak, or even sense the oppressive sorrow that pervaded the air. _'But... that's... why would she... why wouldn't he...?'_ As if deciding that some mysteries were too profound to be solved, and that it was better not to waste time trying, Akane pushed all consideration of this unbelievable revelation out of her mind. "But even so. How can you say it doesn't matter that you beat him?" she asked, returning to her previous track. "It matters to me!"

"It does?" Ryoga said quietly. "I'm sorry, Akane."

"Sorry for what? Ryoga, I'm _glad_ you won!"

Akane had spoken the words with no idea that they would serve as powerfully as they did. Like a shot from a cannon, the communication screamed through the air and smashed a hole in the despair surrounding Ryoga. That emotion was certainly not banished, but for the first time in more than a day he was able to feel something else reasonably strongly: surprise. "Y- you are?" he stammered.

"Mm-hm." Akane nodded her head firmly. "You deserved to win! You've worked so hard trying to get better, and you never descend to the kind of cheap tricks he uses sometimes." The words tumbled forth, spilling out from behind a door she usually kept locked and barred. "I get so sick of the way he always wins, time after time, no matter what. No matter what he has to do to win, either. And it just makes it worse that I can't ever wish for Mousse or Kuno or somebody like that to put one over on him! They might really hurt him, or even kill him! But you're better than that, Ryoga. I know I can trust you not to do more than just beat him. That's another reason I'm glad you did."

"Do you really think so?" The words emerged as not much more than a whisper. Now Ryoga could feel a veritable hurricane of emotions, all struggling with each other. Confusion, hope, remorse, regret, happiness, tenderness, fear, and of course the sorrow from before. Already that one was increasing again, as memories from the fight and after surged out of the dark corners of his mind. "But... but Akane... I could have killed him. I didn't mean to, I deliberately chose not to! The Graveyard Shift was meant to use to kill, not just pin someone, but I promised myself I'd never, ever do that. But I didn't know what would happen when I combined it with the Shi Shi Hokodan! If I'd used the normal form instead of the Perfect one, it might have been enough to kill Ranma anyway!"

"W- what?" Akane gasped.

"That's right." The despair was rising again, winning the battle for Ryoga's psyche. "The blast from the ground isn't nearly as powerful when I set it off with the Perfect Shi Shi Hokodan. I think it's because the second move overpowers the first, or something. That was what I did to beat Ranma, but that was the first time I ever combined the moves and I didn't even know there'd be an explosion. If I'd just used the normal version, I could have killed him by accident after all."

Akane's brow wrinkled. "Oh. So what?"

Once again, shock battered its way through Ryoga's malaise. "What did you say?"

"Well, really, why are you letting that bother you so much?" the youngest Tendo counterqueried. Considering the number of times she'd seen highly skilled fighters do their deliberate, futile best to wreak permanent harm on Ranma, it just didn't seem all that important to hear Ryoga angsting about a harmless mistake he wouldn't ever repeat. Honestly, her friend was too sensitive for his own good. If only he could donate some of his excess to Ranma or something. "I mean, that didn't happen, and you didn't mean for it to happen, and now that you know you'll never actually do that. The reason you're practicing here is to make sure you know what's safe and what isn't, right?"

"Um, yeah, that's right..."

She smiled at him. "So why are you letting that get you down? Ryoga, the future is more important than the past, but they're both way more important than an accident that could have happened and didn't."

"M- maybe you're right..." But after all, it was thoughts of both the past and the future that were the real source of Ryoga's depression. What might have happened in the fight with Ranma wasn't a truly significant source of pain; it was just the one that he'd thought safest to tell her. After what Ranma had forced him to see, there was no way he could go back to being Pchan in the future once Shampoo's trick wore off, and it would be even worse to tell Akane of what he'd done in the past. Whatever wrong he'd done to her through his masquerade, at least he hadn't hurt her consciously—either in his conscious awareness or hers. But if Akane ever learned the true identity of her pet, that would change. And that he absolutely could not bear.

"So, are you feeling better now?" Akane asked anxiously. To her eyes, it looked like he'd made a little improvement, but nowhere near enough yet.

"I..." He wanted to reassure her, to make her feel better, but here and now the lie stuck in his throat. Ryoga just looked at her helplessly for a moment, then gulped, and said, "Akane, I... I just don't know..."

_'Oh, Ryoga. Why isn't this working?'_ Akane thought, anxiety rising a bit higher. _'There's no good reason for him to be feeling this bad.'_ She considered things for a few seconds, before the obvious answer hit her. Ryoga had been using the Shi Shi Hokodan just now, and she had actually been able to feel the depression from it from twenty feet away and on the other side of a wall. That had never happened before. It must be that he had been overusing the move, and it was starting to feed back the despair into him and the area around him.

Her voice firm with conviction, Akane said, "Then maybe you'd better not use the Shi Shi Hokodan again for awhile. I think it's starting to really get you down, Ryoga. You don't want to be depressed all the time, do you?"

"I don't want to be lost all the time either, wandering around with no idea where I am or where anybody is who knows my name," Ryoga said quietly. _'I don't want to have hurt you or taken advantage of you or be even less worthy of you than Kuno.'_ "But that's how it is. The Shi Shi Hokodan doesn't make me depressed, I use it because I already am."

"Then why can I feel it so strongly now, when I never have before?" Akane challenged.

"Huh? Feel it?" Ryoga gave her a look of surprise, which gradually shifted into thoughtfulness and then concentration. Suddenly the oppressive sensation was gone, and the only clue Akane had remaining to Ryoga's state of mind was the look in his eyes. "I'm sorry, Akane, I didn't realize you were. It's not the Shi Shi Hokodan. It's part of the Graveyard Shift, a trick for extending my aura pretty far out away from me."

Despite all the time he'd spent around Akane, and the various intimate confessions he'd heard from her, Ryoga never had quite grasped the depth of her ability to run with a first impression. _'Whatever,'_ she thought to herself. _'He's probably just using the aura thing to block me from feeling it now so I don't hurt too.'_ Aloud, she said, "Please, Ryoga. Do it for me. I... I hate seeing you hurt like this... it hurts me too..."

"Really?" Ryoga whispered.

"Yes, really!" Akane said emphatically. "Ryoga, I know you don't get to come by as often as you want to. I know you hate how you get lost so often. I do too. But even if you can't be here all the time, you're still my friend. A good, important friend. You do know that, right?" she asked anxiously, memories resurfacing of the confused state of affairs that had been Ranma's first clash with Ryoga's Perfect Shi Shi Hokodan. Ryoga had wanted to have fuel for the fires of depression, and to that end he had asked her to tell him that she hated him. Akane had certainly not been able to say it convincingly, but even the lackluster performance she had managed had been enough to drop her friend into the depths of despair. Surely that must mean he valued her friendship at least as much as she did his!

Ryoga, meanwhile, was standing stock still, plunged into the deepest maelstrom of confused emotions yet. He'd hurt her, the one he'd never wanted to hurt... but she didn't know about it... he wasn't worthy of her... he had helped her before... and if not him, who would?... she still did care about him... she thought he was an important friend...

He closed his eyes, perhaps hoping the darkness behind them would be less confusing than Akane's caring, concerned stare. But it was just as tumultuous there—no, even more so! His thoughts were screaming in circles like a banshee conga line, whirling around and around with no sense or resolution in sight.

_'Why does everything have to be so hard?' _he thought feebly. _'Being Pchan was wrong... but there was some good in the bad too, just like I told Ranma... why couldn't it have been the good without the bad? What would that have meant anyway?'_

Ranma's main rival wasn't as prone to sudden flashes of brilliant insight as was the pigtailed boy. But Ryoga experienced one now, a sudden burst of understanding that in that moment he was sure was the most important one he'd ever had in his life. It seemed to blossom forth out of a dozen thoughts combined: Akane's words about the future being more important than the past, the bitter accusations Ranma had hurled at him two days ago, the desperate consideration he'd given to the matter since then, his futile wish that he could have had the good aspects of being Pchan without the bad, the cold inescapable awareness that Akane deserved better than him... all of these together lent him strength for the epiphany.

_'I can still be her friend. I should still be her friend. She said it herself, I'm important to her. If I do what I was planning, leave and never come back, it would hurt her. And that's the last thing I ever want to do.'_ Despite the season of the year and the general stillness of the air, it felt like a cold, bracing wind was swirling around him. Things would be different. They _had_ to be different. But he didn't have to lose everything he had left. It wouldn't be right to let go, because that wasn't the right thing for Akane. She needed someone who would really be there for her, would care more for her than for himself, would listen to her and support her and value her as much as she deserved to be valued. He couldn't do any of that as Pchan anymore... but if he didn't stay, if he wasn't there for her as much as he could be, if he didn't tell her just how important her friendship was to him, he'd be failing her far worse than he had before. He'd be hurting her with his eyes wide open. And that was unacceptable.

He took one more deep breath, his eyes still closed. Something else was unacceptable as well, which was funny, because less than a week ago he'd have said letting go of it was unthinkable. He remembered the times when he'd thought about Akane, called out to the stars as if speaking to her, declared to the world that if she ever said to him that she didn't love him, that her heart was for someone else, then his own heart of glass would shatter forever. All those memories seemed so distant now, and so unimportant.

Strange, how everything was so much simpler now. He loved her. But he didn't deserve her. He didn't deserve her friendship, but she didn't deserve to have a friend abandon her. It all worked out to a very simple principle: he was going to be her friend, and nothing else.

Just for a second, he felt an unexpectedly strong pang of resistance to this idea, the old dreams trying to struggle back to life. They were quickly buried in a tide of furious anger. How dare any part of him keep on like this! Those desires, that aching belief that the care Akane showed her friend and her pet ought to mean she'd someday love him as a man—that was just the sort of thing that had led him to crawl as Pchan into her bed! To do the very things Ranma had so painfully hurled back in his face, the failures his rival had illuminated once it was too late for Ryoga to walk away from them on his own!

The anger went as quickly as it had come, a brief intense flash that had burned out that last stubborn remnant of the old him. Once before, Akane had told him she didn't hate him after all, had done it in the middle of the battle in which he'd tried to use his Perfect Shi Shi Hokodan to put the final seal on his victory over Ranma. Hearing those words from her had shattered his depression, but she'd immediately followed them up with the reassurance that he was a good friend. Hearing that that was how she saw him—as a friend, and nothing more—had sent him plunging back down to the nadir of despair.

But here and now, that message from her felt like rain on ground too long parched and broken and desolate.

Ryoga's eyes opened. This time, the look in them was nothing painful for Akane to see. "Akane... thank you," he said, swallowing a lump in his throat. "Hearing that... it really does make me feel better. You're a good friend too, and a good person. Probably the best of both that I know."

"Oh... I'm sure that's not true," Akane said diffidently. "I'm really glad to hear you say it, though. But do promise me not to use the Shi Shi Hokodan again soon, okay?"

"I promise, Akane." An easy enough promise to make. She'd said it hurt her if he was depressed, and he had to be depressed to use the move in the first place. And although there was certainly enough stuff in his past to make depression easy to come by, he would do as she had suggested and keep his eyes on the future instead.

And speaking of the future... Ryoga's eyes widened suddenly. It seemed as if whatever jolt of enlightenment had sped his brain up to unusual heights of brilliance hadn't worn off yet, because he suddenly saw something else very important. Akane now knew to expect his falcon curse to wear off soon. Before the most recent changes she'd never had a reason to think of him in combination with Jusenkyo, which had to help explain why she'd never suspected the truth about Pchan. But that wasn't true any longer, and if Akane should see him panic as he dodged incoming cold water when he was supposed to be free and clear of the temporary curse, she might start thinking along a track that would really hurt her if she went too far down it.

What could he do? There was only one solution—fly to Jusenkyo while he still had the wings to do it, locate the Spring of Drowned Falcon, and immerse himself in it for real. The Spring of Drowned Man would be even better, except that without wings it would surely take much longer, _unacceptably_ longer, to get back to Akane. This way when the curse never wore off Akane would think Shampoo had been wrong about that happening, or Ranma had lied when he said it, or something like that.

"Ryoga..." Akane said hesitantly. She'd been silent for the last couple of minutes, brooding about something. Ryoga hadn't noticed, as he had been too busy considering the implications of his epiphany. But she was ready now to talk about it. "I've been thinking about something, and it doesn't make any sense. Ranma told you that Shampoo just gave you a curse that'll wear off in a few days, right?" He nodded, a little nervous as to where she might be going with this. "Well, why would she? What would be the point? It doesn't do any good at all, and it doesn't fit with what you told me. You know, that she cursed you in the first place because she didn't want you to have an advantage over Ranma."

Ryoga held back a sigh and a grimace as he remembered the morning when she had been introduced to that idea. _'Dammit, I should have thought it through better. Maybe there's some things I can't tell her, but I shouldn't ever lie to her. And I didn't even stop to think about it then... No, I shouldn't beat myself up about it now. That's no different from the other stuff I used to pull, and that's the old me. The future, and being Akane's friend, not the past and how I failed her—that's what I've got to focus on.'_ "I... I don't know, Akane," he answered. That, at least, was true; he had no idea how giving him a temporary curse would fit in with what Shampoo had really said, back when she'd first 'offered' it to him.

"I don't know either! Don't know why she would even bother doing that, if it was just for a few days. I can sure see her giving you a real one so you wouldn't be so much stronger than her precious 'Airen', but what good would that little bit of time do?" More confused than ever, Akane sought further clarification. "What exactly did Ranma say, could it have been a mistake? Are you sure you heard him right?"

"I don't know about a mistake, but I know what I heard. He yelled loud enough for me to hear him clearly over the Perfect Shi Shi Hokodan."

Akane blinked, as a vision of memory danced through her head. "Say that again."

"Say what?"

"Are you telling me he told you that at the very end? When the Perfect Shi Shi Hokodan was coming down! Ryoga, were you standing close enough to be affected too?"

"Yeah, but you know the move doesn't affect me. Well, by itself it doesn't," Ryoga corrected. "I got thrown clear when the ground exploded, but the chi just washed past me."

_'Why am I the only one who sees things clearly around here!'_ Akane silently exclaimed. Taking a deep breath for calmness, she explained. "Ryoga, don't you remember what happened before? Ranma figured that out too, and he said some stuff to make you even more depressed. That jerk said he'd been taking advantage of me, and of course that was going to hurt one of my good friends even worse. But then at the last minute he let you know he was lying through his teeth, and hearing that made you happy again. And so you took the full blow just like he did, or even worse since you weren't ready for it. Don't you see? He had to be trying to do the same thing again this time!"

Ryoga stood like a statue, frozen motionless with yet another great shock. "I... I don't believe it... you're right... you have to be..."

"Of course I'm right," Akane growled. "It's just what that jerk always does, pulling any cheap trick he can think of to get the win, not even caring about how far he has to go to do it. You must have known it too, Ryoga, that's why you weren't any happier when you heard him say it, or afterward. You must have known in the back of your mind that it wasn't true."

"That... that honorless scumbag..." A battle-aura, starting out small but quickly growing, sprang to life around Ryoga. "I'm gonna kick his butt all the way to the gates of hell and back! How dare he do this!"

"Just don't use the Shi Shi Hokodan, okay?" Akane said, concern rising again. "And don't do anything that could get either of you hurt in your cursed forms."

"Right, right, sure." Ryoga took a deep breath, then let loose a cry that felt long overdue. "RANMA! PREPARE TO DIE!"

Akane watched with little to no surprise as he dashed away in a straight line for his backpack, grabbed it up and swung it into place without breaking his stride, and continued to accelerate. Not even bothering to alter his course to use the gate, the Lost Boy instead barreled through the wall and kept going in that same straight line—a line one hundred and sixty-three degrees away from the path that would have led him back toward her home. "Well, okay, see you later then," she said with a snort, a shake of the head, and a small smile. At least some things didn't change.

-xxxxxxxxxxxxxx-

The morning sunlight glinted in Ranma's eyes and burnished his shirt a deep fiery red. His pigtail whipped and crackled in the breeze as he spun through a kata. Normally he would perform those inside the dojo, and save the outdoor practice for sparring with his father. But Genma had been gone these past eleven days, and although Ranma wasn't about to admit missing the old man, he could at least concede that it felt good to be training out here. Even if there was a nagging sense of anticipation, a feeling in the back of his mind that any minute now a furry arm would grab him from behind and sling him toward the koi pond.

He finished his current pattern and stopped to rest, regarding that body of water with veiled eyes. _'Wonder what the old man's gonna say about this,' he mused. 'Knowing him, he'll probably just squawk his fool head off without even thinking things through. That's Pop all right—go for the knee-jerk reaction no matter how much better it'd be to stop and think things through a bit.'_

Ranma smiled as he contemplated this. He was looking forward to it, anticipating with a good deal of pleasure the shock and discomfiture that Genma was sure to experience. The more his father blustered and complained, the more fun it was going to be. _'Guess I just didn't handle it right with Akane,'_ he mused. _'She's still an idiot for not even listening when I explained it, but at least that gave me an idea of what not to do with Pop. I'll let him yell and raise a ruckus, and once he finally gets the first shock out of his system THEN I'll remind him about Mom.'_

It was a thought that had never been very far from Ranma's mind of late—that he had finally gotten back on the right side of the promise his father had saddled him with so long ago. Nodoka could meet her son at last without any risk of disappointment, no chance of finding out that the man-among-men she'd dreamed of was half the time only as manly as a tomboy could be. She would never learn the truth of 'Ranko Tendo', would never be forced to face the fear and failure that her son and husband had endured. The Saotome family would finally be able to come back together once Genma made his way back to the Tendo home.

Ranma's eyes widened and he smacked his fist into his palm in sudden realization. Suddenly it was a lot easier to admit that yes, he really was feeling anxious for his father to return.

_'Hope it won't be too much longer,' _he thought. _'Man, don't it just figure that the old freak would pick the worst possible time to pull something like this. We could have gone to see Mom already if Pop hadn't been dragged off on that stupid training trip. Yeah, right, like there's really gonna be any training going on.'_ He could count on the fingers of one foot the number of times he'd seen Happosai work to improve his father's skills, or Soun's, or... come to think of it, the only real memories he could bring to mind were of the old lech powering up Ranma's own opponents. _'Sure hope that's not what this is all about,'_ Ranma thought dubiously. _'Pop better not come back knowing how to do the Demon Head.'_

Hopefully this trip would just be another of the jaunts that his father had described to him a few months back. Genma had been drunk enough to talk freely about a topic that he usually avoided like the plague, and Ranma had been annoyed enough at Happosai to listen in the hopes that more information might help him better fight the ancient lecher. It had been revealing, in a way, but it hadn't exactly been information that helped him with any of his day-to-day struggles. Well, that wasn't quite true; some of the mental pictures that Genma's tales had painted were at least funny enough to reduce his stress level.

And Ranma supposed it was a little gratifying, to understand the difference between Happosai's training methods and his father's. Genma had made his share of boneheaded mistakes, but throughout it all he had been there guiding Ranma directly, and deliberately seeking out the new sources of knowledge that would help his son grow in the Art. Happosai's philosophy seemed to be more along 'do-it-yourself' lines, where his part as the Master was to put the pupils into situations where they would have to bust their own butts trying to come up with new strengths and tricks. That might even be a decent training method if you didn't have anything specific left to teach your pupil... but considering the number of special techniques the old freak knew and his disciples didn't, Ranma supposed Happosai was just expressing his lazy sadistic side.

Deciding he'd had enough of a rest break, Ranma chose a new kata and whipped into motion. For the next twenty minutes he glided around the yard, bounced from the ground to the wall to the roof, and generally put forth a performance that would leave special effects technicians with their mouths gaping open. He ended with a flurry of midair punches and kicks, his trajectory taking him from the far side of the yard to the near, passing directly over the koi pond. He settled down on the porch and regarded that body of water with a smug smile. "You ain't got much left in the way of bad news, have ya?" he jeered.

The koi jumped into the air and fell back beneath the water. The spray from its splash shone like jewels in the morning light. Ranma just grinned at the pleasant spectacle; he was much too far away for the water to hit him, and even if it had, the random transformations just weren't that irritating anymore. "Nope. You got nothing left to hold over my head."

"Talking to yourself, Saotome?" This was Nabiki, speaking from the other side of the doorway that led into the house. "Why don't you do something useful, like coming inside and getting cleaned up and ready for breakfast?"

Ranma just shrugged. "Don't feel like it just yet. It's not like anybody's waiting on me. Akane's the one who ain't back from jogging."

"Still, wouldn't it be better to only have to wait on one person to get ready instead of two?" Nabiki prodded. "You're a Saotome, aren't you? That means you're always supposed to be eager for your next meal."

"Hey, don't lump me in with Pop like that!" Ranma protested, completely and utterly without justification. On seeing Nabiki roll her eyes, he continued, "Besides, I already went flying earlier this morning and caught a couple of pigeons. Kasumi's breakfast can wait."

Nabiki made a truly disgusted face. "Ranma, that is barbaric even for you."

He smirked back at her. "You know something, Nabiki? You're kinda gullible in the morning."

"Oh, so that was just a joke, was it?" Nabiki's eyes narrowed ever so slightly, but that was the only evidence she allowed herself to show of her reaction. _'I'll get you for that, Ranma. Just you wait.'_ Then she shoved those thoughts to the back burner, as she sensed an opportunity more important than planning minor payback—namely, the chance to gather additional information. "Wouldn't surprise me if you really had, ahem, _stooped_ to that level." She watched in a total lack of surprise as the pun flew well over Ranma's head. "Just how far does being in that shape go? Do you have instincts like that?"

"Eh, not really," Ranma said. "I mean, yeah, there was one day when I spent a long time flying, and got pretty hungry cause I'd skipped lunch. I kinda had the thought in the back of my mind, but I never actually did it. Come on, Nabiki, you gotta know I was kidding; Kasumi's cooking is way better than something like that."

"Of course it is. I was just curious as to how much of a role your falcon instincts play, as opposed to your usual intellect."

He shrugged. "I'm the same guy no matter what shape I'm in. Jusenkyo lets me know how to use the body, it don't reduce me to that level for real."

"Hmmm," Nabiki responded, her tone dubious enough to ruffle Ranma's feathers. He frowned, but before he could say anything, she replied, "That's all well and good, Saotome, but there's at least one issue of basic biology that concerns me. That ought to concern you too."

"What's that?" he asked warily. Biology wasn't as bad as some subjects, but anything over a certain level of academia was nothing he wanted to think about now.

"Oh, nothing really," Nabiki murmured. "Just some harmless speculation on my part."

When Nabiki started out with something ominous and then beat around the bush instead of saying what she meant, it could only mean one thing. "In case you forgot, you took the last of my allowance yesterday," Ranma stated. "I ain't gonna have anything else to pay you until Pop gets back."

"What the heck, I suppose even I can give a freebie once in awhile." Especially when giving the information in question worked directly toward an important goal. "Are you aware of how female animals' fertility cycles work, Saotome? It's the same principle for almost all animals, including peregrine falcons."

"Huh?"

Noting Ranma's eyes were already beginning to glaze over, Nabiki stepped up the pace and intensity of her explanation. "When the time is right, a female will go into heat. That means she's fertile, ready to get pregnant. She signals this by giving off pheromones, special chemicals that drive the males of the species wild when they smell them. It's Nature's own love potion number nine, Ranma—and I hope for your sake that you're as good at resisting your cursed form's instincts as you say."

THIS, he hadn't expected. Now that she mentioned it, Ranma did remember learning that particular lesson at Furinkan. It had stuck in his mind better than most because he hadn't been able to decide whether animals had it better or worse than he did. He'd never expected to possibly have a chance to find out first-hand.

The pigtailed teen chewed his lip in anxious thought. Then, brightening, he said, "But hang on, Nabiki. If that was gonna happen with me and Shampoo, there's no way she also would've cursed Ryoga."

"Oh?" Nabiki countered with a raised eyebrow. "No way she would curse Ryoga, who's almost never around and who she could just dodge once or twice until he got lost again?"

Ranma's own brow wrinkled in concentration. "But ain't that going against what you were suggesting in the first place? If it was just instinct, she wouldn't think to dodge him. And now that you mention it, wouldn't this kind of stuff have been a problem for her back when she had the, uh, her old curse? That can't be how it is."

_'Damn, this isn't going well,'_ Nabiki thought, keeping her true emotions off her face. Ranma shouldn't be thinking it through to such an extent, and he sure shouldn't be giving Shampoo the benefit of the doubt. Had something else changed recently when she wasn't aware? Blast it all, she needed more information! Maybe she should look into bugging the house and dojo for real.

Before Nabiki could decide what to say or do next, the rear gate swung open and Akane passed through. "Hey, Akane, glad you made it back," Ranma called, rising to his feet. "Nabiki's so hungry she ain't even thinking straight. Let's get some breakfast."

"Let's not yet," Akane snapped, striding over toward him with her hands balled into fists at her sides. "Let's talk about the fight between you and Ryoga."

Ranma frowned, not having even the slightest inclination to remember that debacle. He vaguely noticed Nabiki scurrying away deeper into the house, and half turned to follow her. Breakfast sounded a lot better than this. "How about not," he retorted. "I ain't in the mood to think about Ryoga beating me with a cheap trick."

"Cheap trick! Oh, that's great coming from you! I ran into him while I was jogging just now, and I got the whole story. You jerk, did you even think about how cruel you were being to him? Telling him that it wasn't a permanent curse after all, lying to him just so you could beat him! And it didn't even work!"

"Look, that's between me and him," Ranma snapped after recovering from his flinch, all the angrier and more defensive because he knew that for once Akane was completely right. She'd chewed him out many times in the past, but always there was some crucial bit of information she was missing or something she'd originally misunderstood and refused to reconsider. Situations like that were par for the course, but here and now Ranma was discovering that being castigated by an Akane who he knew was truly in the right was much less pleasant. He'd never expected her words could resonate so strongly and painfully with his own conscience.

Forcibly reminding himself that even if she was right it wasn't her place to be doing this, he continued, "Just drop it, Akane. Unless you can tell me where he is right now, so I can go see him, I don't want to hear anything about this."

"Well, that's just too bad, Ranma! You're going to hear it anyway!"

"Excuse me, sis." Nabiki's cool, dry, clipped tones somehow managed to cut through Akane's tirade. Both Ranma and Akane turned, to see the middle Tendo standing only a few feet away and holding a nondescript brown paper parcel. "Ranma and I were in the middle of an important discussion."

Ranma blinked. "We were?"

Nabiki sighed. "Yes, Ranma, although apparently you weren't paying enough attention to realize it."

"Nabiki, this is important too!" Akane protested.

_'I'm sure Shampoo would agree,' _Nabiki thought acidly. _'I'm sure she'd just love for me to keep silent and let you rake him over the coals some more. Screw that, little sister, I'm not letting your temper and shortsightedness shoot us all in the foot.'_ Nabiki just hoped that the ploy she was about to execute would be enough to derail this mistake-in-the-making. "As important as a care package from the Cat Café? I think not," she quipped, then handed the parcel to Ranma. "This came in the mail for you, Saotome. Unfortunately, there was a bit of an accident involving the koi pond."

Ranma took the offering, turning it over in his hands and noting that whatever the accident had been, it had apparently involved enough contact with water to make the ink run to complete illegibility. He shot one disparaging glance toward the pond, muttering, "That's low even for you," under his breath. Opening up the package, he extracted several sheets of paper—noting without any surprise that they, too, couldn't be read—and two bars of replacement waterproof soap.

"Well? What does it say?" Akane wanted to know.

"It got too wet. I can't read a word of it." Ranma shrugged. "Eh, it's probably just the same basic stuff Shampoo told me yesterday."

"What did you say?" the youngest Tendo replied, in a tone caught somewhere between a gasp, a choke, and a snarl.

Ranma steeled himself, knowing that the admission wasn't going to go over well, but determined to say it anyway. "I met up with Shampoo while I was flying yesterday. She told me about why she'd said the water was only good for a couple of days; it was cause she really had believed that was how much time we had, just for a different reason." He decided not to bother with the full-fledged explanation, figuring it was a pretty safe bet that Akane didn't want to hear it. "She also told me she'd already sent me this letter with more soap, all that she had left except for one bar for herself." The Amazon had been a little odd when talking about the letter, rather coy and hesitant... maybe even shy, if such an adjective could be applied to the girl who thought nothing of jumping into the bathtub with him. He wondered if there had been anything else of significance in the letter. Oh well, whatever it was, it couldn't be as important as the explanation she'd already given him.

Neither Ranma nor Akane noticed it, but just for a moment, Nabiki lost her fabled composure. A scowl darker than anything Ranma had ever seen from Akane covered her face as she furiously processed this revelation. Apparently it had been a mistake to choose this moment to pass along the package; the soap should have been Akane's cue to reveal that she had ordered twice that much, and the watermarked letter should have just muddied the waters further, not led to such damnable news as this. So Ranma had met up with Shampoo yesterday? So he had apparently already forgiven her? So her hard work in obliterating the contents of that letter had all been wasted? What was she supposed to do now?

Akane, meanwhile, was teetering somewhere between furious anger and tears. It wasn't ever going to end, was it? Ranma was never going to change... the most he'd ever do would be to give Shampoo the cold shoulder for a few days and then he'd go back to being just as big a pervert with her as ever...

Her eyes, which had widened and then slammed shut at Ranma's communication, opened again. Most of her body trembled with the effort to control herself, but her hand was rock-steady as it shot out and grabbed one bar of soap from her fiancé.

"What was that for!" he demanded.

"For Ryoga, you idiot!" Akane spat back. "He shouldn't have to suffer like this just because you and Shampoo are a couple of heartless jerks! If it wasn't for Kuno getting this idea to splash you, I wouldn't even let you keep one bar!"

Two days ago, Akane had stood frozen, unable to decide what to do as events swirled around and past her. Here and now, it was her sister's turn. Nabiki felt nothing but a cold frozen lump of queasiness in the wake of Akane's declaration, knowing with sick certainty that her sister was making a mistake, but unable to find any shred of inspiration on how to begin damage control. All she could do was remain still and watch events unfold before her, feeling the sensation of powerlessness that she loathed above all others.

Ranma, meanwhile, was holding motionless as well, although in his case it was due to shock and rising anger. Him, heartless? After all he'd done for her and for everybody, how hard he'd tried and how much he'd sacrificed in doing the best he could? No forgiveness for the mistakes he'd made and no credit for the good he'd done?

She wouldn't _let_ him keep a bar!

He opened his mouth, ready to tell Akane exactly what he thought of her ultimatum and her attitude. But then a scene came rising out of recent memory, one cold enough to bank the fires of his anger. He seemed again to see Ryoga's despairing face, heard the determination and sorrow in his voice as he demanded that his rival start treating Akane better. It was enough to draw Ranma back from his first furious impulsive response.

Here and now he wasn't wrong; Akane was. But that didn't change the fact that Ranma had gone way too far when he faced Ryoga last time, that he owed the Lost Boy. _'Maybe I can pay a little of that debt now,'_ he thought grimly. Taking a deep breath and focusing all his will, Ranma swallowed his anger, leaving only the intensity behind. He would speak civilly and carefully to Akane, letting her know what was what without being hard on her at all.

Akane blinked and gasped as her hands were suddenly empty, her fingers buzzing and stinging. She hadn't even seen Ranma move, but suddenly both bars were back in his possession. "Ranma—!" she started.

"No, you listen to _me._" Ranma spoke the words as calmly as he ever had, satisfied that there was no hint of anger in his tone, and more than satisfied that the strength of it seemed to have gotten through to Akane. The hot flush of fury was already draining out of her expression. "You're right that one of these bars is goin' to Ryoga. But it's my decision to make and it's my job to give it to him. Not yours, not either one of those. You understand me? Shampoo gave the soap to me, and I was the one who screwed things up with Ryoga. That means it's my responsibility to fix it. I don't need you telling me what to do and I sure don't need you trying to take matters into your own hands. Okay?"

Akane swayed like a reed in the wind, fighting a horrible feeling of emptiness inside. Not again! She'd promised herself she wouldn't fold like this again! But she could feel it happening, could see it right before her very eyes. She didn't want to be someone who would give way under pressure like this! Damn it all, she'd even been making some progress recently! But here and now, staring helplessly at the fire of pure force burning in Ranma's eyes, it was as if that had all been a dream. Why was this so much harder to stand up to than anger from him would have been? Gathering all the strength she could muster, she protested, "But, Ranma..."

"But nothing!" he declared. "Akane, this is my business. I gotta be the one to make it right. It wouldn't be right for you to get involved. Do you understand?"

Knowing that she would hate herself for it later, but unable to manage any other response, Akane nodded her head, turned, and walked inside.

-xxxxxxxxxxxxxx-

_'This is pretty strange,'_ Ranma mused as he sat at his desk awaiting the arrival of the teacher. _'Today's been a lot more peaceful than I expected.'_ It was the first school day of the week, his first day back at Furinkan since the interrupted battle with Tatewaki Kuno. He and Akane had arrived at school to find no sign of the kendoist. Ranma had been surprised at this, as he was fully expecting to have to dodge an aqueous assault in order to make it inside the building. Failing at that, he'd at least expected Kuno to show up for lunch, but the hour came and went with no sign of the Blue Thunder. _'Maybe he's waiting till after class because that's what he did last time and he's too stubborn to change tactics. Or then again, maybe he's out sick. Considering how disappointed he must've been on Friday, and then Saturday when I wasn't here, he could've shot his mouth off once too often around Kodachi about what he was gonna do to me.'_

Ranma paused to fight off a minor case of the chills. _'Ain't like I want to waste time fighting him this afternoon, but it'd be better than that alternative. Kodachi really mad at someone, mad enough to really get creative in punishing them... I'd be okay with that for Happosai, and maybe Panty—' _he cut himself off with a mental snicker, _'that is, Rebel Leader Taro, but it's not something I'd wish on Tatewaki 'Mostly Harmless' Kuno.'_ At least not now, with his girl form nothing but an unpleasant memory.

Still, it would be nice if Kuno didn't challenge him this afternoon. Ranma didn't want to hang around Furinkan too long. _'Akane didn't get into anything like the kind of snit I expected today. It's Ucchan's first day back, she's making sure I know she missed me and wished she hadn't had to be gone that long on the family visit, she even whips up some okonomiyaki for my lunch—and Akane just stays calm and quiet throughout it all. That's way luckier than I usually get.'_ But he didn't want to push his luck even further, and so Ranma had not said anything yet to his oldest friend about the recent changes in his life, hadn't brought up the sore subject while Akane was in earshot. He'd made plans with Ukyo in a private moment to go to her place this afternoon, which was when he would break the news. Of course, that plan required Akane to be elsewhere at the time, which really meant he needed to get after school while the getting was good, take advantage of her having joined that silly club and make tracks before she caught up to him.

On the other hand, it grated against his pride to run from a fight, especially a fight with Kuno. And there was the fact that the plan he'd made for dealing with Tatewaki's latest and greatest inspiration required him to have one real fight with the kendoist. He intended to spend one challenge doing just what he'd told Kuno he would do, dodging the best his opponent could throw at him with no outside interference. Then, when Kuno inevitably tried again on the next day, Ranma would give a dramatic speech about just how deluded the Blue Thunder really was to think this would melt him down to nothing—and stand there and take the splashing full on.

The key, of course, was the soap that had accompanied Shampoo's ill-fated letter. He hadn't used it today, since he was going to need to demonstrate the change to Ukyo. And before he put that part of the plan into action, he really needed to talk to Shampoo again and find out if she knew exactly how long the soap's protection lasted after a single application. It would be easy enough to be waterproofed when he arrived at school, but from the few times he'd used the soap so far he couldn't be certain its magic would last the whole day. No, the shield would need to be refreshed at some point. It would be a lot easier to pull off everything if he could just soap up after gym class and still be good at the end of the day, rather than trying to get in a quick lathering right before he left the building.

But, Ranma reminded himself, those were thoughts for another day. The only question for today was, _'Assuming Kuno is here and planning to challenge me after school, should I skip out with Ucchan too quick for him to catch us? Or should I take the time to get that first, dry fight out of the way?'_

"Hey, Ranma honey. What's the deal with Akane?"

Ranma blinked, focusing on reality around him instead of his thoughts. Ukyo had left the classroom when Akane and the last teacher did, but she was back now. "What'd you say, Ucchan?"

"I asked what the deal was with Akane. I was on my way back from the ladies' room just now, and I saw her out the window in front of Furinkan. There was some kind of cart thing full of buckets of water, and she was ripping it to pieces." Ukyo's brow wrinkled. "It was violent even for her. Don't tell me she finally lost it while I was gone?"

Feeling less ambivalent about this round of interference than the last, he replied, "Nah. That stuff she was destroying belonged to Kuno."

Ranma had meant to go into more detail, but at this the chef relaxed noticeably. "Oh. Say no more."

There wasn't much time to say anything else anyway, as at that moment their final teacher of the day arrived. Ranma shot a quick whisper to Ukyo reminding her that he wanted to get to her restaurant as quickly as possible after school, then concentrated on making it through the last hour of boredom.

Ukyo, who had missed class for two weeks and would have been far better off paying strict attention to the sensei, spent that hour running his words back through her mind and blushing at the connotations.

-xxxxxxxxxxxxxx-

"So how've you been these past coupla weeks?" Ranma asked. He and Ukyo had made it back to her place without incident, and the two of them were seated next to the long counter where the customers watched her work her magic. It was time now to break the biggest news of the year to her. He just hoped the method he'd chosen would work better this time than it had before. Back when he'd first told Akane and her sisters, he'd led up to the news gradually and deliberately, choosing what he'd thought was a good pace as he built his case step-by-step. That seemed like a much better thing to do with a friend than just dropping the bombshell straight out.

His efforts had apparently been wasted as far as Akane was concerned, but hopefully Ucchan would be better. And so Ranma once again did his best to gently lead up to the news. "Anything cool, new, and interesting happen for you? Did ya solve any huge problems while you were gone?"

"Um, Ranchan, this was just a Kuonji clan get-together. I wouldn't even have gone, at least not for the whole time, if they wouldn't have thought skipping out was a crime against humanity. I never would have heard the end of it. Might even have had some of the relatives decide to come on over and set up shop here in town, to keep a closer eye on me." Ukyo grimaced at the thought. That was _not_ something she wanted to happen until she'd made a bit more progress with her fiancé (i.e. buried the competition and walked off into the sunset with his arm around her shoulders). "Trust me, family reunions aren't that exciting or life-changing."

Ranma gave a long series of coughs, amidst which could be made out the words "Nodoka Saotome."

"Don't even joke about that!" the chef exclaimed, not wanting any reminder of the threat hanging over Ranma's head if he ever revealed himself to his mother. "A seppuku promise is NOT the kind of excitement or life-change I want to think about!"

"Yeah, me neither," Ranma said with a huge grin.

"Huh? What's with the smile, Ranma honey?" Ukyo asked, puzzled. He didn't talk about his mother with her very often, but each time he had his mood had been much sadder and more pained than this. A possible solution presented itself, and before she could tell herself not to get her hopes up too far the chef blurted, "Did you meet her for real while I was gone, and get off the hook!"

"Nope, not yet. But soon," he promised.

"But soon?" she echoed. "What about the curse?"

"Oh, yeah. That." Ranma's smile only widened. "Tell me something, Ucchan. If you had to have a Jusenkyo curse, what kind would you get? Don't just pick outta the springs you know about, imagine that if it exists there's a spring for it. What curse would you be okay with?"

Ukyo was more confused than ever at the turn the conversation had taken, but that didn't really impede her from answering. "That's something I had thought about before. Gave it a good bit of thought actually. I'm pretty sure that if I had to have a Jusenkyo curse, and assuming there is such a thing, I'd take a dip in the Spring of Drowned Wolf."

"Why's that, exactly? What do ya like about that form?"

"Well, for starters I absolutely wouldn't want any spring that messed with my head." Like the Spring of Drowned Priest that he'd told her about, from that time the Jusenkyo Preservation Society had come after the various Nerima curse victims. "And I'd hate to be helpless in my other form. With that curse I'd be a big bad predator that nobody in their right mind would mess with. It's close enough to a dog that people wouldn't freak out or call animal control if I acted harmless, but it's not close enough that anybody would see me as something to put on the menu at their restaurant.

"But the real reason was for _you_, Ranma honey."

Ranma blinked. "Huh?"

"Think about it, Sugar." Ukyo's eyes twinkled merrily. "If I had to have a curse, it might as well be one that would make it only natural for me to chase a certain other type of animal away. A certain furry little, evil little animal that you really don't like getting close to." She was referring to one cat in particular, but Ukyo didn't see any need to be that specific.

"Heh. Thanks for the thought," he said with a grin. _'And thanks for talking around it like that instead of naming them straight out.'_ "So, you would've picked your curse based on it working for me, huh? No thoughts of you getting a guy curse to kinda match the one Jusenkyo stuck me with?"

"Not on your life," the chef said decisively. "I spent too much time as it is pretending I was a boy. That's not who I am, and it damn sure isn't who I want to be. Er, the guy's uniform I wear to Furinkan notwithstanding."

"Like I'm gonna say anything about somebody wearing what they're comfortable with instead of stickin' to the rules." Realizing that the conversation was drifting off subject, Ranma reeled it back in. "Did you know that Shampoo and Cologne got back from that trip to China? They came back just a coupla days after you left."

Ukyo blinked. She had just been about to bring up the issue of his mother again; where the heck had this new subject change come from? "No, I didn't know, although I kind of suspected we wouldn't be lucky enough for them to stay away much longer. Why does it matter?"

"Cause of where they went in China, and what they did. You asked me why I'm not scared ta meet with Mom anymore? You wanna know why I asked you about Jusenkyo curses that wouldn't be so bad after all?" Ranma paused for just a second, then continued. "Shampoo got rid of her old curse back at Jusenkyo. She turns into a falcon now. And she brought back water from that spring and let me use it too."

Ukyo met his words with silence, and a stare as blank as parchment. Ranma let the silence stretch for awhile, sure that his oldest friend would have something to say in response. Eventually, though, beginning to get a little worried, he asked, "Ucchan? You okay?"

"A- are you serious!" the chef managed to gasp.

Ranma nodded. "Yeah. No more 'Ranko Tendo', no more curvy little redheaded body spitting in the face of that 'man among men' promise. Nothing for Mom to be disappointed about, nothing for me to be scared of."

_'Wish I could say the same.'_ The thought whispered through Ukyo's mind, weaving through the echoes that still resounded from two previous sentences. Ranma had said it so casually, that he wasn't the only one who'd taken on this new curse, that it was a package deal for him and Shampoo. How could this happen! It was wrong, so completely and utterly wrong that the Amazon got to share something so private and intimate with Ranma!

And the thought was very, very frightening too. Ukyo took a deep breath and managed to push most of that emotion aside for now. "I... I think... Ranma, this is more of a shock than I was ready for... I was only gone for two weeks! And things change this much in that little bit of time!" Realizing that she hadn't achieved as good a grip on her emotions as she'd first thought, Ukyo took another couple of deep breaths. "Can... can you show me this new curse?"

"Okay, yeah, sure," Ranma replied, a little nervously too. While not a terrible reaction, Ukyo so far had not taken this as well as he'd hoped. Maybe it would get better once she got past her initial shock. Best to move on toward that point as quickly as possible.

He'd brought along a modified hot water dispenser, twin to the one currently set up in the Tendo dojo. He fished this out of his pack now, walked over to the sink, filled it up and began the heating cycle. "This is rigged so I can use it myself in my cursed form. I brought it here so I'd have another safe place to change back to a guy when I need to. Uh, if that's all right with you." He set it down a few feet away on the floor, then returned to the sink and ran a little cold water into a cup. "Don't freak out on me now, Ucchan," he requested, then threw the cup's contents in his face.

Ukyo continued to stare as her fiancé shrunk down to a sleek bundle of feathers half-hidden by the clothing that he no longer really wore. She watched as Ranma slipped out of the shirt and peered up at her, craning his head in what one distant corner of her mind labeled a very cute gesture. He then gave a hop, skip, and flap that brought him up to the long counter next to her. She hesitated a moment longer, then reached out and gingerly ran one fingertip down his back. _'Less painful than pinching myself, and just as conclusive I guess. This really isn't a dream.'_

Ranma was still studying her intently, Ukyo noted, surprised at how much human expression she could make out in her transformed fiancé's feathered face. He gave a cheep that clearly sounded both questioning and a little worried. _'But then, considering how Akane must've taken this news and the kind of stuff she has to have said about it, I suppose it's only natural he'd be a little concerned right now. Even if Ranchan might not think of it by himself, what it means for him to get the same curse as Shampoo, Akane has to have pointed it out. He's gotta know the Shampoo half of this wouldn't be good news for any of us.'_

Once again Ukyo reached out to stroke the transformed teen. This time she used her entire hand, moving slowly and gently, but deliberately enough that Ranma would know she wasn't angry at him. She looked him in the eyes, blanked all thoughts of Shampoo from her mind while focusing on what Ranma had said this meant for him, and managed a smile. At this, Ranma closed his eyes and sagged a little, evidencing clear relief as the tension leaked away.

As a result, he really wasn't prepared for the heated water that cascaded down on him.

The next several seconds would form some of Ukyo's more vivid memories. Later, the chef would berate herself for not thinking things through, for forgetting that although she'd switched her fiancé between forms many times in the past, there were certain critical differences now. But she never would be able to scrape up a true sense of remorse over the mishap.

Once his pants were safely back in place, Ranma was at least able to manage coherent thought. _'What was that I said to Shampoo? Oh, yeah, 'You only got yourself to blame if Ucchan decides to grab these same kinda opportunities you've been having so much fun with.' Geez, I was more right than I knew,' _he grumbled to himself as he fastened the ties on his shirt._ 'But this is partly my own fault too. Shoulda been as prepared as I was when I explained everything to the Tendos. I shouldn't've just assumed she'd understand I was gonna use the hot water myself to change back after she left the room and it was safe.'_

He risked a glance back at Ukyo. Her blush was slowly fading, but still was one of the most impressive he'd ever seen. Ranma wondered what it must have looked like in its first full flush. He'd been a little too busy scrambling to recover to take note of Ukyo's face; the most attention he'd been able to spare her was to make sure she wasn't going for her mega-spatula. He'd been on the receiving end of that a few times in the past when he'd embarrassed her, but evidently this time he was going to get a break.

"S- so, Ranma honey!" Ukyo said. The words managed to be as bright and cheerful as she'd wanted, but she failed utterly to achieve 'carefree'. "You said you brought that hot water gizmo over to leave here, in case you needed to fly by and change back? That's nice."

"Yeah, so if you could find a safer place for it than the middle of the common room, I'd appreciate it."

"Will do, Sugar." Of course, the small size of her building meant that if Ranma said the dining area was out, that pretty much just left the bedroom. "Hey, you'll need to leave some clothes over here too, right? So you'd have something to change back into." No sooner had the words escaped Ukyo's mouth than she gave herself a mental smack upside the head. _'Idiot! You didn't need to remind him of that! It wouldn't have hurt anything to let him make that particular mistake once. You jackass, it's supposed to be Akane that says the first thing that pops into her mind without thinking it through at all!'_

"Thanks for the reminder, Ucchan," Ranma said, unintentionally rubbing salt in her wounds. "I'll sneak a shirt and pair of pants over here as soon as I can do it without getting caught."

"Without getting caught, huh? You mean you don't want Akane knowing you're moving some of your stuff over to my place," Ukyo noted sagely. "Yeah, I guess I can see how painful that might be."

"Well, let's just say I don't need things to get any more stressful around there than they already have been," Ranma muttered. "I suppose you can guess that she ain't taking most of this too well." He hesitated for a moment, weighing his options, then continued, "What about you? I'm sure it was a big surprise to hear all of this. You gettin' over the first shock now?"

Ukyo gave him a hooded stare. "I don't think that's what you really meant to ask, Ranchan. I think you meant, am I going to throw a hissy fit about this. Am I right?"

"I dunno. Are you?" Ranma asked, grinning ever so faintly. If Ukyo had so much as glanced over to the wall where her battle spatula was standing, he probably wouldn't have been so sanguine about the question. But as it was, her tone and her expression were enough to put him back toward his ease.

The chef grimaced at the wordplay. "Let me ask you another question. Ranma... how do you feel about this curse? Forget the stuff about your mom for a minute, because that doesn't apply for what I'm asking. If Shampoo went to Jusenkyo, then she could have brought back an honest-to-gosh cure for you. She didn't do that, all she did was give you the chance to take the same new curse she had. So tell me how you feel about turning into a bird when you get splashed now."

Ranma took a deep breath, marshaled his thoughts, and did just that. "If Jusenkyo was here in Japan instead of buried in the middle of China, if it was easy for us to get to, I'd tell all you guys that you ought to give it a try too. Bein' able to fly... Ucchan, it's just not something I can describe for real. It's better than words can say, so much excitement and freedom, nothing to tie you down, nothing to limit you or say, 'this is the only choice you can make'... I, I'd rather have this than a cure. At least for now, with everything still so new and exciting. Shampoo did the right thing, bringing this back instead of a cure."

He even surprised himself a little when he spoke those words. It was the first time he'd stated this so plainly, whether to someone else or to himself. Of course, two days ago when he and Shampoo flew together he'd learned that a cure hadn't even been an option, since she had believed it was vital to keep her activities a secret from Cologne. It had been all she could do to get her hands on water from the same spring she had used. Finding and acquiring Nannichuan had simply been a shot that was not on the board.

He didn't think Ukyo particularly wanted to hear that much detail about the Amazons' actions, though. "And if I ever change my mind about it, I can fly back to Jusenkyo and get cured in my own good time. Prob'ly wouldn't take more than a couple of days to get there."

"Although getting back might be a bit of a pain," Ukyo replied. Mentally, she added, _'Seems like that applies in more ways than one. Damn you, Shampoo! How could you snag such a huge advantage, manage to make such a big change around here in such a short time!'_ The chef fought down a strong urge to find whichever heads of her family had been responsible for the timing of this reunion and flatten them with their own spatulas.

"So... I told you how nice this all works out for me, how glad I am for what's happened. What about you? What do you think?" Ranma asked, a bit hesitantly. He wasn't sure, but it almost felt like he'd sensed the beginnings of a battle aura around Ukyo for a second there.

"I..." Ukyo paused for a long moment, then sighed. "Since you're this happy about the change and it means such good things for you, then I'm happy too. Happy for you, that is," she clarified. "You cannot possibly expect me to be happy for Shampoo."

-xxxxxxxxxxxxxx-

The sun was beginning to ride low in the sky, its color deepening into orange away from the yellow of day. Traffic on the streets was picking up, the tide of pedestrians rising as the first wave of people finished their day's work and left for home. A gentle east wind was blowing, carrying the delicious scent of Cologne's special seven-flavor ramen from the box on Shampoo's handlebars back to her nose.

The hairs on the back of her neck were standing on end, as she stared at the endpoint of her journey.

As it turned out, the address for this particular delivery order was a vacant lot. Such places were much more common in Nerima than in Tokyo as a whole; Shampoo had even heard a rumor once that the town council deliberately kept certain lots undeveloped, so that there were places for martial artists to brawl while doing minimal property damage. Whether or not that was true, the Amazon knew one thing for certain: every time she'd been summoned to a deserted place like this for a ramen delivery, it had turned out to be a trap. And frankly the lavender-haired girl was getting a little tired of it.

She was still too far away to make out much detail, plus the property wall of the occupied house next door blocked her view of nearly half of the lot. Her eyes narrowed, and she pulled three items from storage. The bonbori she gripped in either hand as she strode forward to confront whoever had decided to challenge Amazon might. The small pouch of cold water was slung at her side, where it could be quickly smashed if she found retreat the better option than facing whoever... or _whatever_... was waiting for her.

After securing her bike against a bench, and leaving the ramen behind for now, Shampoo stalked cautiously forward. She set her path in a long arc that brought her around into the empty portion of the lot that she'd been able to see at first. Sure enough, in the remainder that had originally been hidden from her stood a lean, tautly-muscled figure scowling darkly at her.

"Oh, is just you. Hello, Spatula Girl," Shampoo said after breathing a sigh of relief. While it had been nice to be rescued by Ranma from the Ghost Cat, that whole episode had been a little hairier than she wanted to repeat. "Shampoo understand why you get tired of okonomiyaki and want something better, but why you place order to get way out here? Too ashamed to let customers know you want better food?"

"Cut the crap!" Ukyo snarled, her hands tightening around her battle spatula. "I think you know damn well why I'm here!"

"Hmm, let Shampoo think. Airen probably tell you about what he and me now share, and you—" Belatedly, Shampoo's mouth clicked shut, trapping the remainder of the sentence. She had been going to say "And you want to pitch fit about it," and go on to inform Ukyo that the Japanese girl would only feel worse after pushing too far and getting flattened like one of her own okonomiyaki.

It had slipped her mind at first that she had very specific instructions from Cologne on how to handle this confrontation.

Making a face and heaving a sigh, Shampoo returned her bonbori to storage. "Okay, you have something to say? Talk."

Ukyo blinked, knocked off-balance just for a second by this unexpected shift in attitude. She regained her focus almost immediately, though. "I want to know where you think you get off doing something like that with Ranma honey," she declared. "Ranchan may be too innocent to think it through, but I know better. No matter how much he says he likes his new form, that doesn't say anything about what _you_ were thinking. If you really cared about him and what he wanted, instead of just chaining him to you, you would've brought back Falcon water and Drowned Guy water and let him pick for himself!"

Shampoo shrugged. "Was not an option. And Shampoo tell him that if he want, she guide him to Jusenkyo for real cure. Not to mention curse Ranma now have would let him go there on own."

_'That's just what Ranma honey said to me earlier! Dammit, just how much has she been messing with his head!'_ "What do you mean, not an option?" Ukyo demanded.

"Is none your business," Shampoo replied curtly. "Any more than is your business to say Shampoo could not share this with Airen."

"Keep your claws OUT of him, Shampoo! I damn well do have the right to object, when some Chinese floozy tries to move in on my fiancé!"

The Amazon's eyes narrowed. "You mean, Shampoo cannot do something nice for Ranma, because is Shampoo doing it? Way too late to say that, stupid. Even before this I already do more for him than you and Akane put together—more nice thing, anyway." Realizing that she was failing miserably to follow Cologne's 'advice', Shampoo forced her hackles down. "Look, we not going anywhere other than usual, and is time to get past that." Although she knew very well that Ukyo wouldn't agree with the changes that she intended to replace the status quo. "We fight right now, nothing get changed. So Shampoo going to ask you for serious talking. What you feel for Ranma? What you want with him? Um... what are your hopes and dreams and plans for the future?" she asked, quoting Cologne directly for the conclusive question.

"W- what?" Ukyo spluttered, once again caught off-balance. Could Shampoo possibly be acting any more out-of-character?

"Was simple questions, Shampoo thought," the Amazon challenged. "You need example? I love Ranma, whole heart. I ready to spend whole life with him, walk down beside him always, learn from him and teach new things to him, bring his children into the world when time is right. Would do that tonight if he ask—well, would start it," she amended. If there was anything in Amazon lore that would really allow her to bring a child into the world in the space of one night, Shampoo wasn't sure she wanted to know.

"Didn't hear anything in there about chaining him down to the life of an Amazon male," Ukyo growled. "If you think Ranma honey's just gonna roll over and be a slave for _anyone_, you've got another think coming!"

"Stupid, where you get that?" Shampoo demanded. "Stupid Japanese think because Amazons is m... ma... um... matriarchal, that mans is slave? What that say about womans in Japan? Is maybe real reason Spatula Girl dress like Spatula Boy?"

The girl in question gripped the utensil in question a bit tighter, raising it into a more threatening position. "I'm _talking_ about Mousse, and the way you and the old woman walk over him like a doormat!"

Shampoo just sighed. "If you have see enough to say that, then you have also see enough to know Mousse throw him down in front of Shampoo to be walk on." Her tone sharpened, and she continued, "Have also seen him act without honor, defy Matriarch—whole leader of Amazon tribe!—and not get more than mild punishment! All this time we let him stay even though he break law, make trouble with Airen, go his own way no thought of what Shampoo or Great-Grandmother want! And you say Mousse is slave! Always thought you have at least half a brain more than Akane, but now Shampoo not so sure."

Noting that Ukyo was speechless with anger, Shampoo seized the opportunity to continue. "Seem like you like Akane Tendo in other way too. You going to answer question Shampoo ask or not?"

"Fine, dammit!" Ukyo hollered. "I LOVE HIM!" As if the force of her exclamation had carried away most of her anger, the chef quieted down and assumed a less battle-ready stance. "I love him," she repeated softly, finding that for whatever reason, in this moment the admissions were coming much easier than they usually did. "I know I want to spend the rest of my life with him. Share everything with him, the good times and the bad. Raise a family, grow old together."

"Specifics, Spatula Girl. So far you just echo some of what Shampoo say."

"You want specifics? I'll give you specifics," Ukyo retorted. "I put my restaurant on the line for him, when he was going up against the Gambling King. I was ready to lose it and be left with just him and me to make our way in the world with nothing but an okonomiyaki cart. And when that jackass Happosai sealed Ranchan's strength, I was ready to stand behind him there too. He'd be no good to the Tendos, who just want him to take over their stupid dojo, and considering how much effort your granny put into helping him I guess he wouldn't have been much of an Amazon trophy husband either. But it didn't make any difference to me, I would've been just as happy to have him like that for the rest of my life. For better or for worse."

Keeping quiet through the latter half of that had been quite a struggle for Shampoo, especially the utterly infuriating 'trophy husband' remark, but she had done so anyway. She had hoped that Ukyo would be a little more specific about one particular aspect of her hopes and dreams, would give her the opening Shampoo wanted. Apparently it was not to be, though. The Amazon settled for forcing the issue rather than waiting until her opponent set herself up. "Back up little bit. You talk about him and you go out in world 'with nothing but okonomiyaki cart'. That not happen, so where you see future now? Those dreams have Ranma and kids beside you in restaurant?"

"Uh, yeah," Ukyo said, her tone making it clear that she didn't understand why Shampoo had even thought it necessary to ask the question. "That is kinda what I meant when I said share everything with him, you know."

Just like Cologne had explained to her. "Just like Shampoo thought." The Amazon could no longer suppress her sneer. "Spatula Girl think he be happy with little house in suburb, two and one-half kids, day job in restaurant? Where you fit in Ranma love for fighting and learning in there?"

"Oh, that's rich coming from you!" Ukyo exclaimed, feeling the quiet moment of honest contemplation shatter. "You want to drag him back to the boonies of China, whether or not he wants it!"

"Is too much to ask you not turn off brain while we have this talk?" Shampoo wanted to know. "If we want to drag him back, Great-Grandmother would have do! That not plan, never was, never will be!" Her eyes narrowed. "Will be what Ranma want when he and Shampoo come together for good and forever."

"I've got news for you, Shampoo. Just because you say it doesn't make it so!"

"Back at own self! You think you best person for him! Shampoo hope so, hope you care that much for him at least. But you is wrong. Is Shampoo who match best to Ranma, is Amazons who have to offer what he really do want from life! Genma have raise him to be someone who not fit at all in normal Japanese life, but Amazon way is perfect for him!"

"Not on your life, Miss Kitty. Er, ahem, Miss Kitty-Hawk. Go dream your fantasies somewhere else. And while you're at it quit trying to make all of Ranchan's decisions for him!"

"'Well, Great-Grandmother, this was a total waste of time,'" Shampoo muttered disgustedly. "'I knew she wouldn't listen to something she didn't want to hear, no matter how true it is.'" Switching back to Japanese, she retorted, "You is one living in dream world! Ranma already beginning to see, really beginning to understand what Shampoo know all along. Is me who love him most, who is best match for him, is me who can give him life he want and deserve! Ranma has been husband by Amazon law for long time now, but by this time next year he be husband by own laws too!"

"Enough," Ukyo spat, bringing her combat spatula into guard position and moving toward Shampoo. "I shouldn't've wasted my time. I knew from the start that this is what it would take to get it through your thick skull."

Shampoo made a wordless sound of menace and disgust, and pulled out her own tools of destruction. "You not catch me without weapons this time, Spatula Girl. And Airen not around to see me beat up his oldest nothing-but-friend. You start this, Shampoo finish it."

"Shut up and fight!" With that cry, Ukyo increased her pace from a stalk to a dash. Shampoo braced herself to meet the initial attack, catching it on one bonbori. Ukyo took advantage of the round shape of the mace by twisting her spatula, sending its blade sliding around the arc toward Shampoo again. The Amazon was forced to employ her second weapon, forming a scissors-style cross that trapped Ukyo's attack.

The Amazon grinned nastily, braced herself, and took a powerful step forward. Ukyo blanched as she was pushed back by the sheer force of the move, reminded unpleasantly once again of the vast gulf that existed between her and the Chinese girl in terms of pure physical strength.

But of course, skill and speed could more than make up that gap. Ukyo altered her grip on the spatula with her right hand, shifting so that she could brace it along the length of her arm. This gave her the leverage she needed to hold it one-handed against Shampoo's strength for one critical instant. In that instant her left hand whipped from her main weapon to the bandoleer that held her alternates, grabbing a single mini-spatula and throwing it directly toward Shampoo's elbow.

The direction of the incoming attack forced Shampoo to disengage and skip backwards to one side. Just as quickly she reversed the direction, charging in again toward Ukyo. The chef backpedaled, deflecting the bonbori blows with the flat of her own weapon, allowing the energy Shampoo was expending to push her backward while she spent just enough of her own reserves to maintain control. _'It'd be damn satisfying to finally outlast the witch,'_ she thought between parries.

Unfortunately, it quickly became apparent to Ukyo that Shampoo wasn't going to let that kind of endurance decide the course of battle. The Chinese girl's blows were coming harder and harder. She wasn't increasing the tempo of her attacks, in fact it seemed to Ukyo as if their speed had decreased slightly, but Shampoo was using much more force behind each blow. Ukyo quickly realized that if this continued, she was going to be in trouble. Constantly deflecting so many powerful blows was beginning to take a harsh toll on her own hands and forearms—and if even one strike slipped through her guard and landed squarely, it was going to put her down and out of the fight.

Accordingly, she switched tactics. Instead of letting Shampoo's force push her backward to conserve her own strength, the chef quickly jumped backward, darted to one side, then drove in from an angle. The next few minutes saw a very impressive struggle as the two girls surged back and forth, defensive and offensive roles switching between them over and over. Their weapons clanged and crashed together, filling the air with clamor and the occasional spark struck from the contact.

The stalemate ended as one of those sparks happened to fly toward Shampoo's face. She blinked, jerking back, and the rhythm of her offense was broken. Ukyo had a split second to decide how to take advantage of the opening. She could have jumped backward, gotten enough distance to make the attack feasible, and launched a flight of mini-spatulas. But the chef instead opted to make one decisive attack with her trusty main weapon, slamming it forward and knocking Shampoo's right-hand bonbori clean out of her grasp.

Only too late did the Amazon's smirk register.

Ukyo had an instant to realize what she'd done, a heartbeat to understand what it meant that she'd maneuvered her combat spatula to its current position. Just enough time to brace herself in the best defense she could summon, subconsciously pouring as much chi into her weapon as instinct, natural talent, and a total lack of that kind of training could manage.

And then Shampoo's other bonbori screamed in, a strike made with as much power as the Amazon's off-hand could bring to bear, smashing forward with Ukyo's weapon, not her person, as the target. This blow wasn't deflected, but blocked squarely—and the force involved left Ukyo's forearms aching, her wrists screaming, and her hands numb and unresponsive, completely unable to maintain their grip on her combat spatula.

Even as it spun from her grasp Ukyo was frantically retreating, dashing away and hopping the wall that separated their battleground from the house next door. Shampoo hesitated, uncertain despite her earlier proclamation as to whether it would really be a good idea to follow her opponent and finish the battle decisively. Finally she decided to let Ukyo make the call herself. The lavender-haired girl retrieved her fallen bonbori, gave the chef's own lost weapon a precision kick that sent it shooting out of the lot, across the street, and underneath a mailbox, then called out, "Ready or not, here I come!" If Ukyo had kept on running, she wouldn't have been within range to hear the cry. And if the chef were still nearby, ready to resume battle, well, who was Shampoo to deny her what she deserved?

The Amazon strode forward along the path Ukyo had taken, save that instead of jumping the wall, she smashed her way through it. As the last of the stone fell away from her and left the path clear, she saw that Ukyo had indeed chosen not to run. And that she was no longer unarmed.

It was Shampoo's turn to receive a terrible shock, and an attack that left her unable to hold her weapons.

Ukyo switched off the hose, staring grimly down at the furiously-skreeling pink-and-purple falcon struggling in the clothes that had been form-fitting a second ago. "Take that, you Amazon bitch. I never used your old curse against you because of how Ranma honey feels about cats. I wouldn't do that to him. But now... you're fair game." Shampoo just screamed all the louder, her furious efforts to extricate herself only tangling the material worse. Ukyo shook her head and took her leave, picking up the pace ever so slightly when she heard behind her the sound of cloth beginning to tear. _'Kind of a two-edged sword,'_ the chef grumbled. _'If I change her like that, she's a lot less powerful, but there's not much I can do to defend myself afterward without seriously risking hurting or killing her. Even with how things are now, that's going way too far. Maybe I should start carrying a net with me or something.'_

-xxxxxxxxxxxxxx-

It was Tuesday afternoon, and the streets of Nerima were filled with students making their way to various after-school destinations. As always, the boys and girls of Furinkan High were particularly glad this time had come, since for most of them it meant an escape from the craziness that choked their school like crabgrass in the lawn of life. Even those students for whom 'home' was stranger than 'school' were usually thankful to see the end of the day.

"That was some pretty impressive dodging, Ranma," Akane said quietly. "I guess you were right after all."

"Course I was," he replied with a satisfied smirk. "Told ya I could deal with the best Kuno could come up with on my own. Man, was he frustrated or what?"

"He sure didn't have a good time this afternoon." True to her word, given yesterday evening at her fiancé's request, Akane hadn't interfered today in Kuno's challenge to Ranma. True to his word, Ranma had dodged everything the kendoist threw at him. Watching the battle had been unpleasant, but Akane had done it anyway, stood at the window and stared down with her stomach clenching in knots at each arcing stream of water. Even though Akane had gotten him to use the waterproof soap before this fight, it had still been all too easy for her to imagine its protection failing at a critical moment. No other 'cure' had worked properly for Ranma, after all. But whether or not the soap's magic was still in effect, Ranma hadn't needed its power to remain bone dry. Not until all of Kuno's buckets were empty had he administered the knockout blow.

"Hey, it's Kuno. By now he'll have woken back up and hallucinated his way into thinking it was at least a draw, or prob'ly that he forced me to run away." Ranma shook his head. "The guy's stubborn even for this town, and that's saying something. I just hope tomorrow will be enough to get it through to him."

She hoped so too, but considering how so many of Ranma's plans had turned out in the past, Akane felt compelled to say, "It probably won't be enough, Ranma. Make sure you use the soap on Thursday too, because no matter what happens tomorrow he probably won't give up that quickly."

"Yeah, all right," Ranma replied. "But geez, I'd like to think even Kuno wouldn't be dense enough to keep thinking a bucket full of water would melt me down ta nothing after he's seen it not work at all."

"I wonder how he came up with the idea," Akane murmured. "It doesn't seem like Kuno to watch gaijin movies. He's more like somebody who'd reject anything that wasn't one hundred percent pure Japanese."

Ranma shrugged. "He probably saw it before he got all whacked out on his samurai trip, and it took him this long to remember."

"Maybe so." Akane fell silent as they made the final turn onto the street which held the Tendo residence. A minute later both teens had passed through the outer gate, stepped out of their shoes, and entered the house. "We're home," Akane called out.

"Oh, Akane! My precious little girl! It's so good to see you again!"

The youngest Tendo blinked, gasped, and would have stepped backward in surprise, except that her father already had her in a hug. "D- Dad? You and Mr. Saotome are back now?" she asked. "What about Grandfather Happosai?"

A reflexive full-body shudder shook Soun out of the embrace. He stepped back, recovered his composure with visible effort, then said, "The Master decided to extend his own travels awhile longer. There were several sites he wanted to visit, but he decided he would enjoy them more without us dragging along at his heels."

"He didn't mind it too much whenever a brawl got big enough to destroy the bar it happened in," Genma said grimly. The elder Saotome had followed more slowly in the wake of his friend's frantic rush. "But when that brothel got torn apart—"

"Excuse me!" Akane interjected with a mixture of rage and disbelief. "Dad, did Mr. Saotome just say you were at a... a... one of those places!"

"Akane, it wasn't our fault! It was the Master, you know how he is! Well, no, you've never experienced anything like his full terror, but at least you should have an idea. We had no choice!"

"And anyway, what part of 'the place got torn apart in a brawl' wasn't clear?" Genma asked sourly. "You can rest assured, Akane, if the Master takes your father and me someplace, it's not so that anyone other than him can have fun. We hadn't even been there two minutes before he'd stirred up a firestorm that we were expected to put out or lead away. And when we couldn't manage it, he kicked the both of us halfway back to Nerima. Considering that we were on another island at the time..." Genma fought off his own shudder. "But all things considered, it was worth it. May the Master enjoy himself now that he's not burdened with us."

"Yes, may he enjoy himself so much we won't see him again for a year," Soun said fervently, knowing deep in his heart that it wouldn't be twelve months before Happosai returned. Still, a man could dream, couldn't he? Or better yet, take his mind off such unpleasant matters to focus on better things? "It's so good to be home. So good to see you again, Ranma and Akane, the two of you coming in together just like a real couple."

"So good to be away from angry salarymen and furious women," Genma sighed, completely overriding his son's reflexive protest and not even noticing Akane's uncharacteristic silence. "So good to be back here, where if anyone comes raging after me it'll be because of something I did of my own free will."

Ranma snorted. "Yeah, and where you've got me to push forward to deal with those people for ya." Then he gave an evil grin. "And where Mom could come by at any time. As a matter of fact, I think she's due for a visit tomorrow."

It was a measure of Genma's fatigue that he didn't immediately splash himself and hold up a sign relating to cuddly pandas and their cuteness and innocence. "One damn thing after another," he muttered bitterly. "All right, son, why don't you and I go on a short but _real_ training trip?"

"How's it real if we're just goin' so you can keep hiding from Mom?"

"Because we'd be doing real training, of course. Don't ask such foolish questions, just go pack." Genma sighed. After what had happened last time, he was in no mood to risk staying around in disguise while his wife visited. Hitting the road again with Ranma would be much better than 'Mr. Panda' being forced to eat the result of Akane's failed culinary endeavors. "Meanwhile, I'm going to enjoy at least one hot bath before we go."

"Nah. I've got a better idea, old man." Ranma had no idea why there was a bucket full of water sitting conveniently there in the Tendo entryway, but such things turned up so often around here that he didn't even think it worth wondering about anymore. "I gotta confess, I actually meant we would _want_ to see Mom." And with that he gave the bucket one swift kick, upending it and sending its contents flying through the air to drench him.

Genma stared in awe for one trembling second, then blurred as he shot forward and grabbed his untransformed son by the arms. "You're cured? You're cured! How did you do it? How long ago did it happen? How soon can we hold the wedding!"

"Idiot," muttered Akane. Not having her own Jusenkyo curse, she had barely been able to avoid the water that her thoughtless fiancé had sent flying and which was now lying in an inconvenient puddle right in the middle of the floor of her home. Louder, loud enough to bulldoze over Soun's and Genma's joyous cries of impending matrimony, she said, "Did you forget something, Ranma? Something about soap, I think?"

"Yeah, yeah, wait here and keep them from tryin' to tie up our whole future while I'm gone," he replied. The pigtailed teen hurried off to the bathroom, ran a little hot water into the tub, and sat down beside it to scrub and soak with cold water. Once the remaining protection of the waterproof soap was washed away, he changed back, dried off, filled one bath bucket with cold water and another with hot, and headed for the living room.

Soun and Genma were seated there waiting for him, though Akane was nowhere to be seen. The two fathers were looking remarkably composed and quiet, certainly more so than Ranma had expected. He set down the two buckets, considering how to begin. Before he could say anything, Soun spoke up.

"Son, Akane tells me that despite appearances, you haven't been cured. She said it was just waterproof soap. And she, she also..." The Tendo patriarch's mustaches drooped, his eyes moistened, his shoulders slumped, and his lower lip began to tremble. "She said she didn't want to hear anything about wedding plans for this weekend."

_'Geez, like it's ever NOT been like that? Like she and I both haven't said that kinda stuff since day one?'_ Ranma thought disgustedly. Before he could say any of this out loud, Soun reclaimed the floor.

"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MY LITTLE GIRL!" The demonic chi-projection filled the entirety of the living room, and blasted every thought not related to sheer terror right out of Ranma's mind.

Rescue came from a very unlikely quarter. "Tendo, give it a rest!" Genma barked, his tone authoritative enough that sheer surprise disrupted Soun's technique. The demon head shifted from outrage to blankness for one instant, and then it was gone. Breathing a silent prayer of thanks that this tactic had worked, rather than drawing Soun's ire from his son to himself, Genma turned his attention to Ranma. "Akane said things had changed, but that was all she told us. And you said something earlier about the two of us deliberately going to see Nodoka." Despite the fact that he hadn't moved his head at all, suddenly light flashed across Genma's glasses, obscuring his eyes as he made his next pronouncement. "I seriously hope that wasn't just some kind of joke, boy."

Ranma spared a moment to wonder whether his old man was deliberately trying to look like Gendo Ikari, and, if so, what that would say about his character. "Heh. No joke, Pop. Like Akane said, things really have changed around here. For the better. Now—let's try this again." And with that he gave another kick, upending one bath bucket and sending its cold water contents flying over him.

"Would you stop making more work for Kasumi!" Akane screeched from somewhere in the back yard, proving that even if she wasn't present in the room she was still watching the proceedings.

"Give it a rest, tomboy!" Ranma reflexively screeched right back as he slipped out of his shirt. The motion was coming pretty easily by now, at least as long as he had been expecting and was ready for the transformation. Once he was free of the garment he took a few steps forward, fluffed water out of his feathers, and focused his attention on the two older men. Both were staring at him with jaws gaping and eyes opened wide.

Acting on a mercurial impulse, Ranma took to the air and zipped around the room a couple of times. At one point he did a swift swooping feint toward his father, feeling slight disappointment that the old man didn't even flinch. Then again, he was probably too shell-shocked for that much response just now.

Deciding that this was as good a point as any to change back—in fact, he probably needed to get it over with before Nabiki and her camera should make it back from school—Ranma swooped down and made a perfect one-point landing in the basin of hot water, his right leg stretched down, his left still cocked upward in the flight position. There was a blur as feathers morphed to flesh, a creak of wood suddenly supporting much more weight, and a splash as his increasing mass displaced some of the water in the bucket.

Then, as he put his left foot down and stepped out in the direction of his clothes, and Kasumi stepped into the room carrying a tray with tea and cookies, there was a gasp and a crash, a hastily-uttered curse, a scream of "PERVERT! How dare you flash Kasumi like that!", and the slamming of the dojo door so hard the wood splintered.

Ranma continued cursing in the privacy of his own mind as he quickly donned his clothes. "Kasumi, I'm real sorry about that, but next time could ya call out, 'Would anyone like some tea?' or something?" he asked plaintively. "You know, give me a little warning?

"Oh... oh my... I'm sorry too, Ranma," the eldest Tendo daughter said. Quickly and efficiently, Kasumi cleaned up the mess she'd made of the tea, mopped up the rest of the spilled water, and retreated to the safety of her kitchen.

Her departure left a rather awkward silence. After a couple of false starts, Ranma ended it. "Okay, you guys saw that I finally managed to get rid of the stupid girl curse. Pop, that's what I meant when I said we can go see Mom now. We don't haveta worry anymore about that stupid promise a certain furry beach ball made about me being a 'man among men'."

"And you think turning into a bird fits in with that?" Genma queried, finding the beginnings of coherent thought and speech.

"You better believe I do!" Ranma looked his father dead in the eye. "A man among men, that's what someone promised he'd turn me into. What's that supposed to mean, exactly? I know it sure _doesn't_ mean somebody who has ta spend half his time as a girl. So what does Mom want? Well?"

Genma's mouth gaped open and closed several times while he tried to get his mind into a sufficiently high gear. At last, speaking rather hesitantly, he replied, "She wants a strong, honorable, upstanding son, a man who's enough of a man to lead and inspire those who are less fortunate, less able, less manly than him."

Yeah, that was the impression he'd gotten as well, during his masquerades as 'Ranko Tendo'. "Well, that sounds like it fits really well with this curse!" Ranma declared. "It's just like Doc Tofu said when I talked with him about all this. People have been dreaming about flying and wanting to fly for real ever since there've been people and birds and dreams. And now... _I can_. And it's every bit as good as anybody ever guessed it would be. How's _that_ for a man among men, huh, Pop? I reached out and grabbed hold of that dream that everybody else had to just look at and wish for!"

"It... it sounds like it might be..." Genma gulped a couple of times, then, speaking in tones not far above a whisper, continued, "Sounds like it might be music to Nodoka's ears. Boy... I think you're right. You really are!" Color and vitality flooded into his face, and a broad smile curved across his lips. "You've really gotten rid of the old curse for good? How did you do it, anyway?"

"Oh, yeah." Feeling a bit of the wind fade out of his sails, Ranma admitted, "You know Shampoo and her granny went to China awhile ago? They got back just a day after you guys left with the freak."

Soun snorted, interrupting Ranma's explanation. "You mean, when he dragged us away from the loving embrace of our family."

"Yeah, whatever. Anyway, while they were in China Shampoo changed out her old curse for a falcon body, and she brought back water from that spring for me." Ranma paused, pinned both men with a fierce stare, then lowered his voice. "Brought back more water than she needed for just me, as it turned out. So I asked her to give a dose to Ryoga too. That jerk came by a while back, showed everyone the new curse, said how Shampoo did it to him against his will, and told Akane it was because she hadn't wanted him to be stronger than me. It's a bunch of bull, but Akane believes it, she's basically already gotten over that particular temper tantrum, so you probably oughta just go along with it too."

Both men blinked as they processed these revelations. The dramatic flush of good humor had faded from Genma's face, leaving him looking more thoughtful than anything else, though a really good observer might also have detected something closely related to worry.

Soun, on the other hand, was more straightforward. Ranma had noted and wondered just why the Tendo patriarch was looking disappointed, but he wasn't left to wonder long. "Son, I'm glad you finally decided to take action there, but I'll confess I was hoping for something different. Something a little more along the lines of telling Akane how you really feel, rather than just shoving Ryoga out of the way and keeping up this tired old act."

In the interests of not ripping the household harmony to hell and gone, Ranma opted not to respond to that little statement with any of a dozen particularly biting remarks. _'Just remember your old man ain't the only one who had Happosai screwing around with his moral compass for years,'_ the pigtailed teen reminded himself. _'Ain't any good to try to get through to Mr. Tendo anyway. If he can say something like that, then he's too old to change, too stubborn to try, and too blind to even see why he might want to. But... but I guess I oughta keep in mind that it took me a real long time to start making some real changes, and the whole thing only started when someone else did first and offered me a chance to get in on the action.'_

Feeling less judgmental and more sorrowful now toward the man who'd let Ryoga crawl into the bed of his own daughter—the daughter he was determined to see married to Ranma—the Saotome heir spoke up. "None of that stuff is anywhere near as important as Pop and me finally going back to Mom. How about it, old man? You feel recovered enough to make one more trip tonight? Or should we wait until tomorrow to go over to her place?"

"Ranma..." Genma spoke very hesitantly indeed. "I don't know... we need to think this through some more..."

"What the hell is there to think through!" his son demanded. "I've been waiting and waiting for you to get back, so you can tell me where Mom lives! I think I'm being pretty darn considerate to wait even until tomorrow just so you can recover from Happosai kicking you around for a change instead of me!"

"Look, it's not that simple!" The pieces were tumbling into place more quickly now, as Genma's precision-tuned survival instinct kicked into high gear. "Yes, Ranma, I believe you're right. Your mother probably won't be anything other than proud of you, even with the curse you've got now. At the absolute outside she might possibly want you to get rid of it, which I suppose would be easy enough to do. She certainly wouldn't call in the penalty for anything you have to show her now.

"But it's different for me. Or have you forgotten I've still got my curse?" Genma growled. "Have you forgotten all the times Nodoka saw 'Ranko' playing with 'Mr. Panda', especially when the two of them had obviously just gotten wet? What do you think will happen if we do go back to her like this, and my own curse inevitably gets triggered?"

"Fine, then just tell me where she lives and I'll go by myself!"

"And you'll tell her what?" Genma wanted to know. "Where am I supposed to be in this picture? How do you explain that it's just you and not me going back to her? And after you've done it, what are you going to do then?"

"I... I'll just spend some time with her, and then tell her I've got to get back to you for more training..." Even to Ranma's ears it sounded lame.

Genma's snort rattled the windowpanes. "You don't seriously believe you'll be able to do that, do you boy? She's been waiting so long for both of us. You'll never be able to hurt her like that, to drag yourself away again. I couldn't do it, and that means there's no way in the world you'll be able to. If I thought we could get away with just visits, I'd have gotten my hands on some of that waterproof soap Ryoga had that one time and taken you to meet her right away."

The thought of Nodoka, so near and yet so far, brought a sudden, strong pang to Genma's heart. If she could be brought back into his and Ranma's lives, everything would be wonderful. He could get reacquainted with the wife he'd missed, Ranma could spend time with the mother he'd never really known, and she could have everything she'd dreamed of for so long. All his and Ranma's hard work and sacrifices would finally pay off. For a moment he lost himself in the glorious vision, one which, though still tantalizingly far off, seemed closer than it had in a long time: Genma and Nodoka together again, Nodoka smiling tenderly and telling him how wise he'd been to chart such a difficult but ultimately rewarding course. Ranma and Akane, happy together, raising children of their own. Ranma running the Tendo dojo, lifting it out of obscurity to prominence and then dominance in the world of martial arts, supporting the elder generations of both families in the comfort they deserved.

"Then what do you suggest!" His son's snarl broke him out of the golden daydream. "Let me make one thing absolutely _crystal_ clear, Pop. The bottom line is, I took this new curse after I realized it would let me meet up with Mom again. I damn well am not waiting much longer to do it!"

Genma stared at the barely-contained fury in Ranma's eyes and was unpleasantly reminded of one particular detail of his perfect dream: Ranma and Akane raising children of their own, children who would one day surpass Ranma even as Ranma had truly already surpassed him. It was the goal of the sensei and the goal of the father as well, and something in which Genma normally took great pride. But here and now the elder Saotome found himself wishing he still had the edge over Ranma in more than guile and body mass.

One of those wasn't going to be worth anything in settling this question. Genma quickly sped his brain up as fast as it would go, focusing on the need to keep his and his son's hides in one piece. That definitely wouldn't happen if the truth behind Akane's country cousin and her big black-and-white pet ever made its way to Nodoka's awareness.

A moment's desperate thought allowed him to find the significance in something that he'd earlier dismissed as unimportant. The fact that Ryoga no longer turned into Pchan hadn't made much of an impact on him; he'd been too busy examining, and not particularly liking, the way the Amazons had strengthened their position. He really didn't like the idea of Ranma going further into debt to them, but in this case it was definitely the lesser of two evils. "Does Shampoo have more Falcon water left? I'll use it to replace my old curse too," he offered. "That will get rid of the last danger, and then we could go to her."

"I... I don't know..." Ranma pulled himself together and zipped out of the room in search of a telephone.

The silence left in the wake of his departure didn't last long. "Saotome, I don't like this," Soun uttered in a harsh whisper. "It's bad enough that Ranma got tangled this deeply with the Amazons while we were gone. We should be working on pulling him away from Shampoo, not encouraging more contact and more debt!"

"You've got a point, Tendo, but you're not thinking things through." Genma lowered his voice even further, to be sure no unintended ears would hear this next bit of dialogue. "You know what kind of a woman Nodoka is. Traditionalist to the very core. She'll never support Ukyo over Akane; your family's samurai ancestry will mean far more to her than some scruffy jumped-up merchant clan's claim. She'll never support Kodachi over Akane; even if the Kuno money and ancestry might be enough to make her overlook their mental kinks, there isn't an honor tie there. And there's no way in all the world that she'll support a gaijin over an honor-bound Japanese marriage pledge. No, old friend, if Nodoka finds out about all the girls after my boy she'll be deliriously happy at how manly he is, but it won't shake any of the support she already has for Akane. If Ranma and I can get back to my wife, you and I will have the best ally we could hope for in making our dreams come true."

"I... that sounds good, I just hope you're right..."

"Of course I'm right. You think I'd take a risk with something like this?"

Before Soun could respond, Ranma rejoined them. He strode back into the room with his face as dark as a thundercloud, disappointment and anger plain to be seen. The anger was largely directed toward himself—how could he have thought to spare some Falcon water for Ryoga, but missed this obvious need!—with a good bit left over for the fate that evidently still enjoyed jerking him around. "Shampoo used up all the rest of the water on Ryoga," he announced. "Try again, Pop."

Ranma wasn't the only one feeling disappointed. Explaining all that out loud to Soun had made the picture crystallize in Genma's mind, and it was one he found himself quite reluctant to relinquish. On the other hand, no more easy answers seemed to be forthcoming.

After nearly a minute of silent thought, Genma answered, "I think the best thing to do would be wait until winter break, and then you and I take another quick trip to Jusenkyo. I'll take on a falcon curse too, and we can even bring back a casket of Nannichuan if Nodoka decides she would rather us not be cursed at all."

"Winter break, huh? Well, that's not so very far away," Ranma mused. Genma relaxed, all too prematurely. "Only about FOUR MONTHS TOO LONG! How's about trying _this_ idea on for size, Pop—you and me leave for Jusenkyo tomorrow, and Furinkan can kiss my pigtail!"

"You know, if the principal heard you say that, he'd claim you were offering to let him cut your hair," Genma said, trying and failing to lighten the mood with humor.

"Cut the comedy! If you think we oughta wait that long then you'd better give me a really good reason why!"

"Because that's how Nodoka would want it." Being reasonably confident of this allowed Genma to look his son in the eye and say it with conviction. "I know you didn't spend a lot of time in class while we were on the road. That couldn't be helped. The Art was, is, and always will be more important, and I needed the time to get you far enough along in it. But now you are, and there's no risk that spending time regularly going to school is going to threaten your dedication to Anything Goes. And so it's your duty to go to Furinkan too, and learn those less-important things. Believe me, boy... it's what your mother would want."

Thinking back to the times Nodoka had been eager to teach Akane or 'Ranko' something, especially that last encounter with his mother, Ranma was forced to concede that point. "Okay, you're probably right. No escape from boredom for me." His eyes narrowed and his stare tightened to near-laser intensity. "But this ain't directly about me, is it Pop? There's only one of us who _needs_ to go change his curse. So let me ask another question. Is there any reason why _you_ ought not to set out for China tomorrow?"

Once again Genma did his impression of a dead fish, mouth gaping open as a hundred useless thoughts ran through his head. _'Because I just got back from thirteen days of hell.' 'Because I shouldn't have to go away by myself for so long.' 'Because I can't afford to leave you unsupervised around the Amazons anymore.'_ All true, all good reasons... but not a one of them that his son would accept.

Having spent a few moments studying and not much liking the expression on his oldest friend's face, Soun reentered the conversation. He knew Genma well enough to pick up on at least some of the other's train of thought. Genma didn't want to do this, but couldn't think of anything to say to convince his son otherwise. Probably he was worried about leaving Ranma alone when the Amazons were on the prowl, but saying that would just make things worse. "Son, that just won't work," the Tendo patriarch stated. "You and your father are guests in our home. You can't expect him to leave for an unknown amount of time while you stay here alone. It's simply not appropriate."

"Didn't seem to be inappropriate those times you kicked me out while he stayed here," Ranma retorted, once again beating down the urge to say something worse. Staring into the older man's eyes with defiant challenge, he realized something—however reluctantly he might admit it, he had missed his father during the latter's absence... but there hadn't been any part of him at all that missed the presence of Soun Tendo.

"That's completely different. In any case, think of your mother. Think of what Genma just said, about how traditional and concerned with honor she is."

"Huh? When did he say that?"

"Oh, right, you were out of the room. Well, that's the way it is, son. You and Genma and Akane can make the trip during the winter holidays. Just think of it as the best not-too-long-after-Christmas present your mother will ever receive."

Ranma's face set like stone. "Mr. Tendo, this is between my father and me—"

"YES, IT IS, AND YOU WILL HONOR YOUR FATHER AND MOTHER BY WAITING UNTIL THE WINTER BREAK TO TRAVEL BACK TO CHINA!" Once again Soun's demonic visage filled the room as it roared its message. Once again Ranma shrank back in utter, abject terror, shaking and quaking as he squeaked an agreement to those terms.

"Good." Suddenly the room was free of any chi-fueled psychotropic phantasms. "I'm glad that's settled then," Soun continued amicably.

Ranma spent the next few seconds gasping, panting, and getting himself back together. Once this had been well enough accomplished, he fired off the bitterest look Soun had ever seen on him. "Mr. Tendo, you know what? You really know how to make me think havin' you as a father-in-law would be a good thing." The sarcasm was still sizzling in the air as he turned on his heel and stalked from the room.

Genma eventually broke the long ensuing silence. "Tendo, I appreciate the save. But I think you'd best not use that tactic on the boy again anytime soon."

-xxxxxxxxxxxxxx-

Nabiki moved silently through the halls of the Furinkan library, ignoring the ominous nature of the books on these particular shelves. She was after quarry rather more useful than moldering old tomes written by men with unpleasantly twisted minds. Catching sight of the back of his head on the far side of one line of books, she continued to the end of her row, and headed up the next lane.

"I've got another little favor you can do for me, Gosunkugi."

The young man in question stiffened, as a quick battle of conflicting emotions played across his face. When he turned to meet her gaze he moved as jerkily as a puppet, trepidation and prudence and reluctance falling to remorseless need. "Um. Hello, Nabiki. How much would I have to pay to find out just how the _hell_ Ranma pulled this one off!"

"You mean this morning's little drama?" It was actually a bit of a stretch for Nabiki to say it as carelessly as she did. _'It was a better plan than I expected, Saotome. I'll give you full credit for that. I figured you'd think that yesterday was all you needed to do, when you dodged every one of his attacks. Following that up today with letting him splash you... Well, I'll admit it was a nice try.'_

But it wasn't going to be nice enough. "He used waterproof soap," she replied, causing Gosunkugi to gulp and turn pale. "It's one of Jusenkyo's little amenities. Wash with it and for awhile you're protected from transforming. Ranma has a small supply of it right now, which he'll use when he knows ahead of time that he'll need it."

After taking a few deep breaths, he managed to fight off the worst of the chill. That Nabiki had just handed out such significant information, without even mentioning payment... he really didn't want to wait for her to drop the other shoe herself. "So that's how he did it. You know, Nabiki, I was really looking forward to seeing Kuno's face when he finally learned how to get his pigtailed girl whenever he wanted her. I don't think he ought to be this disappointed, do you?"

Despite the surge of ire as Gosunkugi unconsciously rubbed salt in the wounds left by Ranma's change of curses, Nabiki gave him an approving look. "I'd have to say I agree with you. Kuno-baby has worked so hard. It would be a shame to let it all go to waste, now wouldn't it?"

"Absolutely," he said firmly. "He needs to try again when Ranma's not expecting it." He paused for a desperate moment, scrambling with everything he had for a nice, _safe_ way to arrange this while still garnering more goodwill from Nabiki. "I might just have to drop a note in his locker, pointing out that it looked like he was using buckets of high-quality steel, which isn't the same as cold iron."

"I'm not so sure I like the timing of that," she demurred. "Since Ranma had enough foresight to pull today's stunt, then he might just be wary enough to use the soap tomorrow too. If Kuno tries in the morning with new buckets and fails again, it's not going to do anybody any good."

_'Except Ranma Saotome, of course,'_ Gosunkugi thought vengefully. "Don't worry, Nabiki. This time I'll spell out what 'cold iron' really means. Not even his family's money could let him prepare another attack like today's or yesterday's with only twenty-four hours to do it."

The middle Tendo blinked, evidencing honest curiosity. "No? What exactly do you mean by 'cold iron' then?"

"It hasn't been worked by machinery or melted down and refined," he explained. "Iron ore dug straight out of the ground and pounded out the old-fashioned way, by hand on a blacksmith's anvil."

Nabiki considered this for a bit, then laughed right out loud. "Knowing Kuno-baby, he'll try to do all that work himself. At least at first," she amended. "And then he'll probably pay a hundred people to finish it up quickly. Sounds like a plan, Gosunkugi." She gave the scrawny boy another approving look. _'He's actually got a decent brain when he's not directly obsessing about my little sister,' _she mused._ 'Maybe I should set him up with Manami.'_ One of her friend's biggest gripes was the horrible lack of intelligent guys at Furinkan, something that Nabiki herself had always considered a mixture of blessing and curse. But judging from recent events, Gosunkugi might be a worthwhile fixer-upper for her best friend and second-in-command. Plus, if the match worked, not only would she get a better hold on someone who was proving to be quite a decent resource, but it would mean a bit less stress for Akane—definitely a useful thing as matters currently stood.

-xxxxxxxxxxxxxx-

"Guess I ain't the only one who thought two weeks with none of Ucchan's okonomiyaki was too long," Ranma muttered, casting a glance back over his shoulder as he walked away from the restaurant. This might be the busiest Wednesday afternoon Ukyo had ever had. Ranma himself had dropped in expecting to get a nice relaxing visit along with his meal. Unfortunately, the sheer number of customers present meant that all Ukyo had really been able to do was serve him ahead of everybody else, not spare the time to talk. Ranma suspected that if he'd asked her, she probably would have closed early, but he hadn't wanted to go that far. Not when she hadn't made any money for the past fortnight and now had such a good opportunity to recoup some of those losses.

"What do I want to do now," he mused. "Suppose I could hit the sky for a few hours..." The thought was as appealing as ever, but on the other hand he felt like a little extra training might also be a good idea. Happosai's methods might be lazy and sadistic, but it was undeniably true that Genma had come back from the trip tougher, stronger, faster, and sneakier. It hadn't been enough to give him the victory in either of the sparring sessions father and son had had since then, but those contests had been a lot closer than usual. Frankly Ranma preferred the gap to be a bit wider in his favor. "Yep. Training it is." Deciding that speed and endurance were better things to work on than balance, he bounced to the roof of a nearby two-story building and began racing toward home.

-Ding Ding-Wham-

"Shoulda picked a higher roof," Ranma mumbled into the shingles he was kissing.

Shampoo peered downward, blinking at the sight before her. "Aiyah! Ranma, what you do under bike?" Leaning to one side allowed her to put one foot against the ground and pull back, drawing her faithful steed off her beloved's prone form.

Ranma got to his knees and then to his feet, brushed himself off, and gave bicycle and Amazon an equally disparaging look. He supposed that innocent act she pulled every time she ran him down was just one of her little quirks, but who did she think she was fooling? "Why do you do that anyway?"

"Huh? What Ranma mean?"

"I mean pretend like you don't have a clue how I happened to wind up flattened under the Bike of Pain. It ain't like you could possibly nail me without meaning to, you know. And in case you didn't realize it, it don't exactly feel good."

Shampoo allowed the look of wide-eyed innocence to drain away. "Hmmph. It no hurt so much this time as first time, yes?"

Ranma frowned. "Is that supposed ta make it all right?"

"Of course it is! You no figure it out even with clue Shampoo just give you?" The Amazon allowed herself a faint reproving smile. "Silly Ranma. Is training. Low-impact endurance training, take much longer than Bakkusai Tenketsu but more fun."

"Fun for who, exactly?" he asked dryly. Shampoo put on the wide-eyed innocent look again, fooling absolutely no-one. Ranma snorted, but could not quite manage a glare. "You know, that was what really bugged me the most about it—the way you acted like it was all some accident and you didn't know how it happened."

"Would rather Shampoo say, 'Pinned you again'?" the Amazon wanted to know. "Or maybe 'Shampoo seventeen, Ranma nothing'?"

"How about, 'I'll make up for this by letting you have all you can eat at the restaurant tonight'?"

Shampoo's brow wrinkled. "How that any different from any day? Ranma could have that any time he come by."

He shrugged. "Yeah, but it's still nice to hear it." There was just something about those four little words...

"You very strange, Airen," the Amazon pronounced. "But Shampoo love you anyway."

That statement accomplished far more, discomfort-wise, than being slammed to the roof underneath her bike had done. Ranma was about to make a remark about getting back to training and take his leave, when Shampoo took control of the conversation again. "Oh, that right, was question I want to ask. Why you call yesterday and ask for more Falcon water, Ranma? You not give any details over phone, and voice sound little strange too. Why you want more?" The barest hint of a warning edge entering her voice, she continued, "Shampoo know is not because you ask to offer it to Spatula Girl Ukyo who just get back in town."

This was a little uncomfortable as well, but Ranma no longer felt the need to retreat. "No. Not for her, for someone else who just got back. My old man," he explained.

Shampoo blinked. "Really? That is surprise. Always seem to Shampoo that he like curse he have, to be lazy and lie around like rug. Flying is wonderful, but does not fit for lazy man."

"Nah, it's not that. It's the curse he's got now, there's someone who's seen him when he's like that and didn't know it wasn't a real panda. Someone neither one of us can afford to have find out who that panda hanging around the Tendo place really was." He hesitated for a long moment, wondering whether he really wanted to go into this much detail. If he went ahead and told Shampoo just who that person was, who couldn't be allowed to know of Genma's current curse, he was going to have to come out with the whole story. Ukyo already knew about his mother, and of course Akane had been there when he first found out himself, but until four days ago the times he'd spent with Shampoo had never really included much talking, certainly not about such deep, personal matters.

"Who is person who no can find out?" she asked, interrupting his consideration.

Taking a deep breath, he resigned himself to not getting back to training for a while. Ranma sank down to a more comfortable sitting position on the roof. Once Shampoo had followed suit, he answered, "My mom."

Shampoo's flabbergasted, eyes-popping, jaw-dropping, hair-toinging response would have been good for a laugh if his own mood had been less somber. As it was, though, he just waited quietly for her to recover.

"Is you for real?" she eventually exclaimed. "You sure this not like last time?"

Ranma blinked. "Last time?" he echoed.

"Remember stupid lady we thought was Ranma long-lost mother, turn out just to be circus master who want handsome man can turn into beautiful woman?"

He grimaced. "Actually, that's one of those stupid-even-for-my-life things I try not to think about too often."

"You and Shampoo both," the Amazon muttered, remembering the way she'd competed with Ukyo and Kodachi to show herself as the best potential wife for Ranma. Only stupid Akane hadn't cared enough to make the effort, and so hadn't earned nearly as much humiliation when the truth came out.

Forcibly pushing the unwelcome memories aside, she continued, "You sure is not another mistake like that one?"

"Yeah," Ranma said quietly. "This time it's for real." He went on to tell the whole story, of Nodoka's first visit to the Tendo home, of Genma's panic and of the role his father had begged him to play, of the explanation he'd later received and the promise his father had so foolishly, so infuriatingly, made for the both of them, explaining how even with his own curse changed he and Genma weren't off the hook yet.

There was silence for a few minutes after Ranma concluded his explanation. Eventually, speaking in a choked whisper, Shampoo said, "But... but... is not real, right? She is own mother! For sure she not really call in something like that, right? Not for something like a curse, Shampoo mean. Is just penalty she put in in case you turn out worse than Genma, not way better like you is. Right?"

"Uh, I wasn't clear enough I guess. Mom didn't ask for that at all, it was Pop's idea. He set the terms and she agreed to them," he replied. "That gives her a lot less leeway than if she was the one who'd done the whole thing. Would she go through with it, if she decided I wasn't a 'man among men'? Pop thinks so. And I've seen her havin' nightmares about doing just that." He paused for several moments, thinking about what to say next, and wishing that he had left after all back when he'd had the chance. Talking about this stuff hurt.

"Even... even if she didn't call in the promise, that ain't all I care about," he eventually continued. "She's been waiting so long, and it's so important to her that when I come back I'm a real man... I don't wanna disappoint her, Shampoo. I don't think I could bear that even if Pop hadn't made the stupid seppuku oath."

"You always real man to Shampoo, Ranma," the Amazon replied. "Curse not change that."

"Oh, really," he said dubiously, giving the lavender-haired girl a piercing stare. "Didn't you once tell Akane the reason you were helpin' me go after a cure was because you _wanted_ a real man on your honeymoon?"

The stare Shampoo sent back his way seemed to indicate that if she'd ever heard anything stupider than this in her life, she'd suppressed the memories. "You take serious what I say to tease Pervert Girl Akane? That just crazy! How many time I hug you whether you in real body or curse body, Ranma? I try help you get cure because you want it so much! How you even wonder otherwise for one minute?" Not contenting herself with this response, the Amazon leaned forward and placed one hand on his forehead. "You no have fever, do you?"

Ranma frowned, and waited semipatiently for her to withdraw her hand. Shampoo did so once she'd gotten in enough caresses to be sure he wasn't feverish and showed no evidence of recent cranial trauma. "Okay, maybe you got a point there. But think all the way back to when you first found out about my curse, Shampoo. Don't say you weren't disappointed then."

Shampoo drew back as sharply as if he'd struck her. "Yes, Shampoo felt very bad then," she confirmed. "But that not same thing, is it? At then I not know about Jusenkyo. You show me curse and say it was real body. After Shampoo go home, learn truth about Jusenkyo, and realize what it mean about who Ranma really is, felt much happiness and relief."

He inclined his head, closing his eyes as he replied, "And that's the other side of it. The curse is the biggest problem, gotta be the biggest thing that would hurt Mom if she found out about it. But it ain't the whole story. I... I've made mistakes. A lot of them, some of them small, some of them big. Like with you back then," he admitted. "It was a bad mistake, and I'm sorry."

The Amazon's expression softened. "Is okay, Airen. If you had not do what you do, things would for sure be different. But is no way to know whether would be better or worse. What if Great-Grandmother never had come here to help? What if you had never learn Kachu Tenshin Amaguriken or Hiryu Shoten Ha? Where would we be now?"

"You could be right, but that don't change the fact that I've made some stupid decisions. This is something I spent a lot of time thinking about yesterday, flying way up there where nobody could interrupt me. Even before then I'd pretty much realized that there've been a bunch of mistakes I've made since coming to Nerima," he said. "I don't think it could've been avoided; this kinda life is so different from the one Pop and I had for so long. There's a lot of stuff I haven't known how to deal with. That business with Ryoga is maybe the best proof of that. I made the same stupid mistake for so long. And once I finally got past that one I made another! It's just... I just..." He heaved a sigh. "Pop was supposed to bring me back to Mom when I was ready, when I was a son she could really be proud of. I've got a lot of stuff that I know would make her proud, but there's still some things I need to work out before the end. That was what I figured out yesterday."

Shampoo was silent for a couple of minutes as she turned all this over in her mind. Maybe it _would _be a good thing for that reunion to get delayed just a little longer. If nothing else it would give her beloved time to finally understand which of the girls chasing him was the one worth sharing his life with. "So when you call you want to get rid of panda curse and go to mother right away, but after Shampoo tell you is not possible you think about it and decide to wait?"

"Not exactly," Ranma said with a grimace. "My first plan was for Pop to leave today and haul his butt back to Jusenkyo to get a cure or a new curse. But Mr. Tendo kinda decided otherwise."

"He make you agree when you not want to?" she asked dubiously. Even if the weepy old fool had that much influence with Genma, Ranma himself could still have come to her and taken her up on her offer to guide him to the Cursed Springs. It would be just as quick for Ranma himself to fetch back a barrel full of water as wait for his father to go and return. Well, Shampoo amended, almost as quick. She doubted she could have resisted the temptation to extend the trip a little. Pulling her mind away from what might have been, she confessed, "Shampoo not see how he do that."

"Then I guess you've never been on the receiving end of that Demon Head trick of his," Ranma retorted. "It ain't just a scary sight, at least not when he's serious. I've been hit by the thing often enough to realize it screws directly with your aura, flipping a switch so that you can't help being scared. He made me agree to wait until winter break to go back to Jusenkyo with Pop." He gave a short, mirthless laugh. "Kinda ironic, really. Now that I've thought about it, waiting a little longer does seem like a good idea. I'm finally starting to make some changes that I shoulda made a long time ago, fix problems that I just ignored up until now—if I even saw them at all. He was just doing his usual throw-a-tantrum-to-get-his-way thing, not even bothering to really think about it, and it actually turned out to be the right thing for the wrong reasons. But I guess we've seen plenty of crazy things like that around here."

"Sometimes seem like more of town is upside-down than rightside-up," Shampoo agreed. "Especially at house of Tendos, where girl who is worst choice for Ranma get to spend most time with him, get most advantages, get most everybody telling you you have to go to her. Is so stupid, they think they can make it happen just because they want, because they say so."

Ranma gave her a flat stare. "How's that any different from your granny when she first showed up?"

"What, you mean when Great-Grandmother test you? And you pass? And she not try force you after that?" Shampoo countered snippily.

"...Well, anyway, that's how things are now," he replied after a moment. "Pop and I are gonna head back to China over the winter vacation." Ranma also had a sneaking suspicion that Mr. Tendo would manage to get Akane along on the trip as well. That was another thing he'd thought about long and hard yesterday, and the only conclusion he'd reached was that he needed a LOT more time to think about the implications. A trip where it was just him and Akane was one thing, since there would be nobody around to try and stir up anything. But himself and Akane and his father... Ranma wasn't sure yet, but he suspected that he might be better off if he invited a couple more people along as well. At least he still had plenty of time to think about it. "I may have ta take you up on that offer you made to guide me back there."

"Aiyah! Shampoo will look forward to it!" the Amazon declared. "Thank you, Airen!"

Ranma gave himself a mental kick. He ought to have realized that saying that would be considered a carved-in-stone invitation as far as Shampoo was concerned. _'Yeah, I really do need to get a little more practice thinking things through and making the right call before I get back to Mom,' _he concluded.

-xxxxxxxxxxxxxx-

Cologne's ancient ears pricked up, as she caught the approaching roar of a bicycle pushed well beyond normal limits. She listened to the screech that was her great-granddaughter's braking, and estimated that Shampoo had just used up at least two millimeters' worth of tire tread. The sound of the front door opening came almost simultaneous with the clunk of the bicycle falling forgotten over on its side. _'She didn't even bother to secure the thing. Whatever has gotten my great-granddaughter into such a state, it must be big.'_

Pogoing down the stairs, Cologne was relieved to see no trace of despondency on her youngest descendant's face. No, Shampoo's visage shone with excitement, mixed with a bit of happiness. "Hello, Great-Granddaughter," the Matriarch said as she settled herself down at a table. "Something seems to have stirred you up."

"Is so!" Shampoo declared, joining the elder. "Great-Grandmother, Shampoo just come from talk with Ranma! Big news, very very big!"

"Slow down, child, you're butchering the language as badly as if we'd been here only a week instead of a year. 'Or if it's that important, just go ahead in our own tongue,'" Cologne offered.

"'It's Ranma's mother! Great-Grandmother, she's alive!'" Although she felt nearly full to bursting with the momentous news, Shampoo did pause then, partly out of a desire to see the Matriarch finally caught off-guard, partly just to catch her breath.

One of those hopes was doomed to disappointment. Cologne stirred not so much as a hair, merely regarded her great-granddaughter with a calm, thoughtful mien. Eventually, just when Shampoo was on the verge of another excited explosion, the Matriarch replied, "'Oh, you finally found that out, did you?'"

"'W... Wha...?'" Shampoo managed, her jaw dangling feebly.

"'Child, I already knew about Nodoka Saotome. You ought to know I make it my business to be aware of serious changes in Son-in-law's life.'"

"'But... but... When did you find out?'"

"'During her first visit to the Tendo home,'" Cologne admitted placidly.

After taking several deep breaths, Shampoo let out a screech that carried distinct echoes of her cursed form. "'And you NEVER TOLD ME!'"

"'Should I have?'" Cologne paused just for an instant, letting Shampoo begin to formulate her indignant reply, but not letting her actually make it. "'Should it have been me that you heard this news from, instead of Ranma himself?'"

"'I... but... he... that...'" Frowning darkly, Shampoo clamped her stammering mouth shut and concentrated on sorting herself out. After a bit, she said, "'Why didn't you tell me to ask him? You know, give me a hint about the huge, enormous news you'd just learned? How long ago was this anyway!'"

"'A few months have passed,'" Cologne returned. While Shampoo processed this response, growling softly, the Matriarch allowed her inscrutable expression to shift into something more serious. "'Why do you think Son-in-law hadn't told you himself before this?'"

"'Because I didn't know to ask!'" Shampoo snapped, holding back with some effort from pointing out that that was the point she'd just been trying to make, thank you very much!

Cologne gave her a long, silent stare, then quietly said, "'Didn't you? Wasn't there some confusion quite awhile back over another woman, one who wasn't Ranma's mother after all?'"

Shampoo just nodded, feeling even more confused, angry, and upset. If Cologne hadn't forgotten that time either, then that made it even worse. She ought to have been all the more aware that Shampoo would have had no reason to bring up questions of maternity with Ranma. Not without the prompting her great-grandmother hadn't seen fit to give her, anyway.

"'Tell me something, Great-Granddaughter. In the wake of that silly business, once it was explained just who that woman was and what she wanted with Ranma, how much time did you spend talking with him about it?'" Cologne narrowed her eyes. "'Did it raise questions in your mind about what the truth of his family really was? Did you sit down with him and ask him about these matters, or other things out of his past? Did you ever give him any reason to believe you'd be interested in knowing these pieces of who he is?'"

Shampoo jerked backward before recovering herself. "'He knows!'"

In the privacy of her own mind, Cologne acknowledged that that was almost surely true. If someone had asked him outright, 'Ranma, do you think Shampoo would be interested to know that your mother is still alive?' he would undoubtedly have been able to answer 'Yes'. But the fact remained that he hadn't sought her out and told her the news.

The fact also remained that Shampoo had never encouraged him to do so, had never arranged for opportunities that would make it easy or natural for him to share such things with her.

"'That wasn't what I asked, Great-Granddaughter. I asked if you have ever once met with your husband to talk quietly, nothing more. To learn the details that don't seem to matter as much. To ask him about the little things, to fill in the edges and corners of the picture that is his life.'" Cologne spoke as gently as she could without sacrificing firmness. "'If you had done that, if you had been interested in him that way, he would have told you about this long ago, on his own.'"

"'Don't say it like that!'" Shampoo cried, too upset to tone her words down to a more respectful level. "'That's not how it is! I do care, I do want to know those things about him!'"

"'But it hasn't been a priority,'" Cologne replied. "'Your focus has been to show him how you feel, and you've driven forward with great zeal and energy to do just that. And in doing so you have almost completely ignored the softer, gentler approach—even though it would have served you far better sometimes.'"

"'Then, then why haven't you ever said anything...?'"

"'It is not my responsibility to take you by the hand and lead you step-by-step through your relationship with your husband.'" Cologne spoke the words softly and gently, but they still stung Shampoo to the core.

"'I don't understand any of this, Great-Grandmother,'" she retorted bitterly. "'Why do you only help me sometimes, and not others? Why do you help me on small things, and leave me to mess up the big ones like this?'"

"'Many reasons, not the least of which is to allow you to freely make mistakes and learn from them. But I think the root and heart of the matter is something you've never understood, maybe never even wondered about." Cologne gave her great-granddaughter a piercing stare. "'If we're going to be honest, then let's be honest. Why do you want Ranma to marry you?'"

The use of such a simple, seemingly-pointless question was a big, fat, red flag. Shampoo would have preferred straightforward, easy-to-understand answers from Cologne, but if Great-Grandmother was using this method of discussion then there was nothing to do but play along. Carefully considering exactly what the Matriarch had said, not just the question but the command hidden in the sentence before it, Shampoo eventually answered, "'Because I love him.'"

"'I couldn't help but notice you didn't even mention the law,'" Cologne remarked.

"'You said you wanted honesty. The law would be satisfied if he only spent enough time with me each year to give me another child. I'm the one who would never settle for that.'"

Cologne made a dismissive gesture. "'Nor will you have to. But that doesn't mean you should spend so little time thinking about honor or its ties of obligation.'"

"'I think about it a lot more than I want to!'" Shampoo declared. "'That stuff is why Ranma has to stay at the stupid Tendo home!'"

"'It's not the only reason, but you are correct. Ranma's honor does tie him to the Tendos. To Akane.'" After a short but significant pause, Cologne continued, "'Do you think you can fight that with love alone? Get Ranma so enamored of you that he'll ignore any and all questions of honor, turn away from them forever as the two of you walk side-by-side into the rest of your shared life?'"

Shampoo closed her eyes. "'If he loves me enough, he'll care more about my honor than stupid Akane's. Or even Ukyo's, even if she has lost more because of him than Akane ever did.'"

"'You have a point, but you haven't considered one important angle: he would have to love you very, very much to throw away his own honor as well as everyone else's just to be with you.'"

"'That's not how it would be!'" Shampoo protested.

Cologne just shrugged. "'Whether or not that is true doesn't matter at all, if Ranma himself doesn't see the truth of it. You need to understand this, Shampoo, so please listen to me very carefully. Love alone is not going to settle this tangle anytime soon unless it's inflicted by magic. If you expect him to choose you based on feelings alone, then you need to get a lot closer to him than you already are. The two of you will need to grow together, to come to understand each other better, to share more of who you are and get past the misconceptions that still linger to this day. All of that will take time.'"

"'I still don't understand why you haven't said anything about this before.'" With near-superhuman effort, Shampoo kept her tone level, excluding any hint of bitterness, accusation, or complaint.

"'Then let me say it bluntly: love, or at least that degree of it, isn't needed now. It can come after he's willingly married you. That has been my plan from the beginning.'"

"'But—!'"

Cologne silenced Shampoo with her most piercing stare. "'I'm talking about MY role here, not yours. By all means continue as you have been. Ranma might not love you enough to throw everyone else in his life away for you, but he does care... even more than he himself realizes yet.

"'But even if you were to suddenly start making every decision perfectly, without any mistakes at all, it wouldn't resolve everything. What if he did love you enough to walk away from everyone to be with you? Do you want to tear him away from the father who's been his only companion for most of his life? From the mother who hasn't even gotten to know him yet?'"

Shampoo shook her head, the motion only detectible if one was looking for it.

"'Of course not. Happy endings require more than luck and good intentions and desire, Great-Granddaughter. They need us to understand and work toward what we really want, and above all to know what we're fighting for and against.'"

"'I know I love him,'" Shampoo said quietly. "'And I know I don't want to wait that long for him to love me like that.'"

"'Well and good,'" Cologne returned. "'But that is _your_ goal, the battle you have chosen. You have to fight it yourself. I already told you that as far as I'm concerned things will work out just as well or better if he marries you first and gives you all his heart afterward. Don't expect me to step in unless it looks like something will threaten _my_ definition of victory.'"

"'Great-Grandmother... will you please just tell me clearly what you mean to do?'" Shampoo asked, hearing the ragged edge of desperation in her voice but ignoring it. This was more important than pride. "'Why wouldn't it help you to help me get him to love me more?'" Surely the closer she and Ranma were, the easier Cologne's self-proclaimed task would be!

"'That last question held no good sense at all, child.'" Cologne retorted. "'Or have you forgotten the reason why I kept quiet and let you think you were making a true sacrifice to give him his new curse? I have helped you at times to grow closer to him, and I'm certain I will again. It's just not my main priority, _nor should it be_.

"'I intend to do what it takes to get him to choose you. Whether that means working with his honor, or helping him realize what you have to offer him, or nudging him to finally see what he'd have to give up in order to be with any of the other girls—it doesn't matter to me. Any one or all three of those together is something I can do in time, as Ranma finally learns the things Genma didn't teach him before. But if you want every beat of his heart to be for you, you need to take care of that yourself.'"

-xxxxxxxxxxxxxx-

"Hey, Sis. Wait up!"

Akane blinked, turning away from the conversation between Yuka and Sayuri. Was that Nabiki calling to her? At this time of day? It was almost unheard-of. The middle Tendo's extracurricular activities meant that she was the first to leave home for Furinkan in the morning and the last to get home in the afternoon. The school day had just ended, Akane and her friends were walking away from the flower arrangement club, and Nabiki should have had other things on her mind than a rendezvous.

The trio of second-year girls stopped, waiting for Nabiki to catch up with them. "Did you want something, big sister?" Akane queried.

"Just wanted to talk to you for a little," Nabiki replied, making brief eye-contact with the two non-Tendos present. In what seemed to Akane to be the blink of an eye, Yuka and Sayuri had said their goodbyes and were hurrying away. Nabiki allowed herself a tiny satisfied smile, there and gone too quickly for anyone else to notice, then strolled away in the opposite direction.

"Talk about what?" Akane demanded as she fell in beside her sister. "And couldn't this have waited until we were home? I want to go catch up to Ranma!"

"You mean, you want to make sure he wasn't planning to head off to Ukyo's place, or catch some air time with Shampoo. Right?" Nabiki drawled. Akane's mouth thinned in a bitter grimace, but she didn't reply verbally. "You know, Akane, that's pretty much a wasted effort. Going to that club of yours means if he wants to ditch you after school, he's got all the time he needs to do it. Spending a few minutes talking to me isn't going to make or break anything as far as that's concerned."

"That still doesn't answer my question," Akane snapped back. "Why'd you want to talk to me now?"

"Because it's the best time of day to catch you when Ranma isn't around," Nabiki answered. "In case you were wondering, that's why I just led us up the stairs to the third floor instead of down toward the bottom where we might run into him." She'd also chosen a route that shouldn't be in use by anyone else at this time of day, since it led to a corridor of storage rooms rather than classrooms. The middle Tendo didn't want to have to interrupt this discussion every few seconds to scare off another random student.

"So you want to talk to me about Ranma." Akane's tone and expression made it clear that she was none too thrilled with this prospect.

"Among other things," Nabiki replied flippantly. Then, as if a switch had been thrown, the carefree expression of mild amusement vanished from her face. "Akane, you haven't been your usual self lately. Not at all. You've been quiet and distant and all closed-off. I don't think Ranma has actually noticed anything other than the fact that you haven't been chewing him out for hanging out with Ukyo or Shampoo, but your dearly beloved older sister is a bit sharper than that. You're hurting, Akane, and I think we need to talk about it."

"There's nothing to talk about." Akane spoke the words bitterly enough to curdle milk. "It's just like you said—there really isn't anything I can do to stop him, if he wants to run off with Shampoo or Ukyo. And it's just like he said—I don't have any real right to interfere in his business anyway, do I?"

"The hell you don't," Nabiki snapped back. "Who do you think you're fooling? You don't believe any of that. You're just saying it because you think you have to go along with it. The Akane Tendo I know is more of a fighter than that!"

"Maybe... maybe I'm tired of some of the fights..." But Akane spoke the words hesitantly, reluctantly enough that Nabiki knew her earlier accusation had been right on the mark.

Nonetheless, the middle Tendo seized hold of the line, skipping quickly ahead to a point that she'd expected to need more time to reach. "Maybe you should be... but that's just because you pick the wrong ones sometimes. If you're finally starting to realize that, then I can see how it would make you want to do something different. But sitting back and letting things happen no matter how wrong they are is _not_ the answer!"

"Nabiki..." She hesitated for several moments, but finally could not help but continue, "What do you mean?"

"Come on, Sis. No matter what Shampoo or Ukyo say, our engagement is the only one that really has honor at stake in it. You have every right to object when those two drag Ranma off, or trick him into spending time with them!"

"But... I... Nabiki, he... that's..."

"That's what? Something you've been trying to fight since day one, and it's still not doing any good? That's just what I'm talking about, when I say you're fighting the wrong battles. If for whatever reason Ranma ends up neglecting you so he can lose a few hours of his time to Shampoo, you've usually done your best to make him pay for it. And that, my dear sister, is the problem. The one you ought to be taking everything out on in a situation like that is Shampoo. Or Kodachi, or Ukyo, or whoever. Not Ranma."

"Why should I?" Akane snarled. "Why should I do it like that? He's the one who went off behind my back to be with someone else. I'm supposed to just let that slide? Is that what you're saying!" It was bad enough that Ranma had basically declared that to her. Had he paid Nabiki to back him up?

"No, I'm trying to point out that neither Shampoo nor Ukyo fight fair. Either one of them will let him get away with anything he likes. How do you think that contrast is going to play out, if he hangs around with them for a couple of hours and then comes back home to a disciplinary session?" Nabiki's eyes narrowed dangerously. "What message is that _really_ sending, little sister? That the pain is for doing stuff with Shampoo—or for coming back to our place afterward?"

Akane flinched back at the harsh words. Immediately modulating her tone and expression, Nabiki spoke again. "Of course I'm not telling you to back down. That's not what a martial artist does. But a martial artist should also pick her battles carefully, and fight the right opponent."

There was silence as Nabiki finished this proclamation, a long, straining, trembling silence possessing a curious overstretched quality, as if it had lasted far longer than the moments since Nabiki had spoken, as though it had endured well beyond the point when it should have perished utterly.

At last it was broken by Akane's near-whispered, "I'm not strong enough to beat either of them."

_'Great day in the morning, she actually admitted it? To herself AND out loud to someone else?'_ Nabiki was barely able to keep the shock from registering on her face. _'This isn't good. Of course little sister couldn't take either of them in a fair fight, but that isn't exactly important. If Ranma sees her come home bruised and battered from a fight with Ukyo or Shampoo, she's not the one who really lost. Quite the opposite in fact. But I don't think telling her that is going to achieve desirable results.'_

Choosing a more persuasive response, Nabiki said, "You don't know that. The last time you fought either of them, it was both of them at once. And that was before you trained hard enough to get the dojo back from our so-called sisters, Natsume and Kurumi. If you can go head-to-head with girls who've lived their whole lives on the road, training to one day take over the Tendo dojo, I think you shouldn't sell yourself so short against a couple of part-time waitresses."

Akane's mouth gaped open and closed for several moments, but she could manage no better reply. Once she judged enough time had passed, Nabiki continued, "And if you did lose a match or two, so what? It would still get you a better idea of what you needed to work toward, give you a chance to figure out the gaps in their defenses while you work on closing your own." _'Who knows? Maybe it would even kick enough holes in your pride for you to let Ranma train you. I'm sure it's not fun, learning under the only methods he knows to use, but it would certainly give you something with him that neither of the others have.'_

At that point, a quick glance from Akane to the window behind her revealed something to Nabiki—this discussion had gone on long enough. Despite what she'd said earlier to her sister, the real reason she'd chosen this time for the conversation was in order to close a vulnerability in one of her own plans.

But from what she could see in the courtyard below, it was too late now for Akane to screw things up one last time. "Oh, crap," she muttered in her best 'that's not good news' voice. That and her expression were more than enough to send Akane whirling around to stare down as well.

-xxxxxxxxxxxxxx-

Ranma gazed disgustedly forward, blinking and blinking as if to dissolve the sight before him. "Man, how much more is it gonna take to get it through your thick skull, Kuno?" He'd thought he had finally settled this five days ago, when he'd let Kuno douse him to no effect. After that, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday had passed at Furinkan without incident. Why was Kuno trying this again now?

This time at least there was no cart standing behind the kendoist. He carried only a single bucket full of water. A particularly ugly bucket too, Ranma noted. It looked as primitive as if somebody with one year of metal shop experience had had to start with raw ore and produce the entire finished product by himself.

"Silence, fiend! It was a deception truly worthy of you," Kuno admitted with a sneer. "But know that the Blue Thunder is not so easily fooled! With this vessel, forged in truth out of the iron that is your doom, I shall finally defeat you once and for all!"

"For cryin' out loud, where are you _getting_ this stuff!" Ranma exclaimed. "The bucket in the movie didn't even look like that! Did Kodachi slip somethin' really exotic into your breakfast today or what!"

"I have no idea what you are talking about, and therefore reject your ploy. You will not confuse me with your twisted, senseless words."

"Fine, whatever. Let's just get this over with." Ranma heaved a long, weary sigh and began walking towards Kuno. Once he'd covered half the distance separating him from the kendoist, he stopped. "But you know, there's no reason for me to let you get my bookbag wet this time. Last Wednesday was enough of a pain." With no further ado, he dropped the satchel that he'd been carrying in his left hand... then, in one smooth motion, pivoted in a turning crouch that allowed him to catch it in his right. Continuing the motion through the remainder of a three-sixty degree spin, he rose again and released the bookbag. With the velocity of his revolution behind it, the missile screamed across the intervening distance to smash Kuno's one bucket out of his hands. "Moron. I already gave you your free shot, and it didn't teach you anything at all. You think maybe one of these days you could manage to learn something?"

Despite the anger clouding his face like a thunderhead, Kuno still wore a smile. Akane Tendo had just appeared at a window several stories above him, and would witness his glorious triumph. If only the pigtailed girl could be here as well. "NOW, MY MINIONS!"

And every competent ninja employed by the House of Kuno soared into the air, abandoning their places of concealment on the far side of the Furinkan boundary wall.

Ranma just had time enough to notice that all of them were carrying the same ugly iron buckets before those buckets were upended. He had time to realize that there was simply too much water to dodge, but not enough to begin a futile effort at dodging anyway. He had time enough to brace himself and be ready for the transformation, but not to snap off the string of blistering curses he really would have liked to unleash while Kuno could still understand him.

And then the water struck the earth, among other targets.

As the remaining mist from his attack cleared, Kuno stared forward in awe, disbelief, and terrible joy. "By the gods!" he proclaimed at last, ignoring the furious screeching of his hated foe. "Last time you were able to draw on the power of a cat, and you managed to keep your human form. To see you brought so low now is a joy's crown of joys, Saotome. And know this—it does not end here! I shall continue my struggle against your dark magics until you are finally reduced to the worm you truly are!" And with that Tatewaki Kuno reared back his head and laughed loud, long, and hard.

Only the fact that he'd visited the restroom on his way out of the building prevented Ranma from flying overhead and dropping a rather unpleasant response onto the Blue Thunder. He settled for one enraged scream loud enough to cause Kuno to wince and grab his ears in pain, then tore into the sky and away, with each furious beat of his wings pushing out his anger and disgust at this turn of events.

-xxxxxxxxxxxxxx-

Once she judged her little sister had recovered enough from the sight to hear her say it, Nabiki let out a quiet, regretful murmur of "That's just great." Heaving a tired sigh, the middle Tendo continued, "You know, I'd just as soon not have had such a good example to back up what I was talking about."

"What you were talking about?" Akane echoed, in a voice that indicated she was only sparing half her attention at most for her sister's words. Her face was white as a sheet, and her grip on the windowsill had already done noticeable damage.

"Yeah, you know—blaming the right person instead of Ranma when something bad happens."

Nabiki actually savored the irony of that statement quite a bit as she heard her sister bitterly whisper, "Right. God _damn_ you, Shampoo."

Before her sister could rush off, though, the middle Tendo spoke again. "There's no hiding it now, Akane. All of Furinkan is going to come to me, wanting an explanation for this. If you let me off the hook on the promise I made not to tell anyone anything, I'll be sure to explain whose fault this really is. How Ranma got stuck with a curse so much more dangerous to him. Who it was who wanted him to have it, and why."

"Go right ahead," Akane snarled, stepping back from the window and hurrying away.

-xxxxxxxxxxxxxx-

Kasumi listened as the front door slid open and one person stepped through it. She sighed a little as the aura of the household adjusted itself to the newcomer. Akane had come home alone, and in a particularly bad mood. Little sister hadn't even bothered to call out, "I'm home," or any other sort of greeting. Resolving to do her best to help her sibling recover a little peace of mind, Kasumi headed toward the entryway.

"Is Ranma here?" Akane asked as soon as she caught sight of Kasumi.

"I'm afraid not, Akane. How was your day at school?"

"Fine up until the end. But I can't talk now, big sister. I need to go find Ranma."

"Akane, stop." Kasumi spoke the words as firmly as she could, arresting her youngest sister's motion. Nabiki wasn't the only one who had noticed her sister's recent silence and despondency. Akane seemed to have left that behind now, but that didn't mean Kasumi felt it right to let her go right back to her old patterns. Maybe it wouldn't do any good, but this time she felt like she simply had to try and help.

Once Akane had turned impatiently back to face her, Kasumi continued, "If Ranma had other things he wanted to do this afternoon, isn't that his business? Why should you go find him and drag him back?"

"It's not like that!" Akane declared. "He could be in trouble, and I need to go help him!"

"Just because he didn't come directly home?"

"No, because that idiot Kuno finally got lucky after class today, and managed to show Ranma's new curse to everyone at school!" She'd given the kendoist her fiercest pummeling yet on her way out from Furinkan, though Akane didn't have any real hope that it would change anything. Kuno was the kind of person who only saw what he wanted to see, after all. But he certainly wasn't going to forget one lesson he'd learned today. "Ranma was shrieking at him loud enough for me to hear it inside the building on the third floor. He was really mad, Kasumi, and he had to just fly away, _run_ away from Kuno! Now I need to go find him!"

"No, you don't." Despite the concern Akane's revelation had raised in her heart, Kasumi spoke steadily and firmly.

"Why not!"

"Well, Akane, just how are you going to look for him?" the eldest Tendo countered. "You can't search the skies yourself. That's where he'll be right now. And you know what Ranma has said to us, about how nice it is to fly. How it lets him feel so free, so relaxed. Since you say he was in such a bad mood after what happened at school, I think the best thing to do is let him spend a few hours doing something that will make him happy again." Seeing her sister still look torn and indecisive, Kasumi gently added, "You don't need to be so afraid for him, Akane. Who could follow him where he is now, to make more trouble for him?"

Akane grimaced bitterly, and turned back toward the door. "That's the real question, isn't it."

-xxxxxxxxxxxxxx-

_'On a delivery, she says. Yeah, right. I'm so sure.'_ Akane seethed as she walked away from the Amazon stronghold. True, the restaurant had had a 'closed for general business—delivery orders only' sign in the window, but who did Cologne think she was fooling? Ranma wasn't at his home, and Shampoo wasn't at hers... the absolute best that she could think, and Akane considered this a wildly optimistic assessment, was that Shampoo was looking for him but hadn't found him yet.

-Ding Ding-Screeeech-

"Akane Tendo? What you do here?" Shampoo queried once her bike had come to a complete stop.

Akane stared up at the Amazon, feeling a huge surge of relief at the sight. Or maybe Cologne had been honest with her after all.

The evidence of Shampoo's recent activities was plain to see, in the large number of empty delivery boxes bundled on her bike. Akane felt a twinge of the old, familiar slow burn as she gazed up at Shampoo, perched on top of a one-story building as if using such a bike route was utterly normal and unremarkable, but this was far overshadowed by the relief that the Amazon wasn't chasing Ranma through the skies in her own cursed falcon form. "Nothing much," Akane said, turning to head for home, or perhaps Ucchan's Okonomiyaki.

Behind her, she heard a snort, a clatter, and a soft impact. Footsteps sounded, and then Shampoo was walking beside her. "Why Shampoo not believe that," the Amazon said conversationally. "You here, walk away from Cat Café big scowl on face, and Ranma not here. Not here with Great-Grandmother, not here with you. You come to see if first one of those was true, yes?"

"No, I didn't," Akane retorted, picking up the pace a bit.

"Oh, right, Shampoo did not phrase it right. Not with Great-Grandmother, with Shampoo. So you feel better now? Green-eyed monster not claw at stomach? Or just tell you go check out Spatula Girl's place next?"

The mocking tone with which the Amazon had spoken almost didn't register at all with Akane. She was too caught up in a sudden realization—that the relief of finding Ranma not here and Shampoo not elsewhere had completely made her forget something else that needed to be done. Coming to a sudden stop, and whirling to face the Amazon, Akane snapped, "I'm getting pretty sick of your attitude, Shampoo. And your tricks, and the way you treat Ranma, and just about everything else too!"

"Big words from someone who not have what it take to back them up," Shampoo retorted flatly. "And way Shampoo treat Ranma? I already know you too jealous to be happy for him when someone else give him something nice. You no have to admit it."

"Something _nice_! Do you know what happened to him at school today? Do you even care! No, wait, of course you don't," Akane declared. "If you did know he was out flying to try and get in a better mood, you'd ruin it for sure by chasing after him!"

"Show how much you know, stupid. Week ago Saturday, Ranma actually come to me and offer for us both to fly together." It had been one of the most joyful times the Amazon could remember, marred only by her beloved's lingering stiffness and soreness from his battle with Ryoga. Still, even that had had its upside—instead of wild aerobatics and chases across the sky, the two of them had spent most of their time flying calmly along and talking. It wouldn't have been Shampoo's first choice for an itinerary, or Ranma's either she believed, but it had been quite enjoyable nonetheless. All the more reason to take to heart the lessons Cologne had finally decided to pass along.

But now wasn't the time to think about such things. "What happen to Airen at school today?" Shampoo asked. Since whatever it was had ended with him flying safely away, it couldn't have been too devastating.

"What happened? I'll tell you what happened! Kuno splashed him and showed off his new curse to everybody there! _That's_ what happened!" Akane yelled. "Thanks to you and your stupid selfish trick, everybody knows Ranma's got a huge new weak spot!"

"Hmmph. One more thing Ranma and me have in common," the Amazon muttered darkly, thinking about Ukyo. There would be a reckoning for that soon, oh yes...

"Is that all you've got to say! Then fine, just shut up and listen to me!" Akane demanded, her hands clenched into fists and tears gathering in her eyes. "Stay away from Ranma! You've done enough to hurt him, back with your old curse and this new one too! I better not ever see you at my home again, Shampoo—or with my fiancé!"

Shampoo stared wide-eyed at Akane... then burst into laughter. Recovering herself, she said "You... you think you..." one more quick interlude of giggles, "_you_ tell _Shampoo_ what to do? Wake up from dream world, Akane."

"I'm warning you, Shampoo," Akane snarled. "Stay away."

"Hmm... let Shampoo think about it..." The Amazon's thoughtful look morphed instantly into a scowl. "No. I will not stay away from own husband, from man I love who is coming to love me too. For sure I not listen to stupid spoiled Japanese brat who think because she always get her way before, it keep on happening." Shampoo met Akane's gaze with a piercing stare that could have come straight from her cursed form. "Only reason you can hurt Ranma is he think he have to let you. Only reason he stay near you is he think he have to do that too. But Shampoo show him better, Violent Girl." The Amazon smiled, a hard, grim, dangerous grin. "Show him how much better Shampoo is than stupid hurtful _weakling_ like you."

Akane's face was a mask of livid white, her anger too great for blood to flush her skin. It had fled instead, as if fearing the intensity of the emotion. "Weak, am I?" she grated out. Then, as Shampoo blinked in surprise, the youngest Tendo turned and darted away through the gate to the yard of one of the houses situated near the Cat Café.

Shampoo's surprise ended with a bang as Akane returned a moment later, following unknowingly in Ukyo's footsteps. "Which one of us is _really_ weak here?" Akane demanded, pointing the hose straight toward Shampoo. "It isn't so funny now, is it? Thanks to you, Ranma's in trouble every time he gets splashed—but he's not the only one!"

Recovering her self-possession, Shampoo gauged the distance between herself and Akane. About ten feet. If the girl switched on the hose, Shampoo might or might not be able to dodge in time. It all depended on the attachment that was on the hose, how quickly and over what range it would spray, and there was no way to determine that in her current position. Better to go with a different ploy.

Shifting her eyes up to meet Akane's, the Amazon projected every shred of menace she could muster as she said quietly, "You think that make Shampoo helpless. Show you different, Violent Girl, and it be the last thing you see. You switch that on and change Shampoo, and I will tear out your eyes!"

Despite Akane's righteous anger, this threat was more than enough to cause her to flinch back.

It was all the opening Shampoo needed.

Sunlight gleamed on metal as the Amazon whipped a scimitar out of nowhere. In the same motion she brought it whirling forward, hastily charging and releasing an attack she had only managed for the first time yesterday. The resultant blast of wind lifted Akane and slammed her backward into the property wall of the house behind her. Her head struck the stone, the hose slipped from her hands, and she dropped to her hands and knees on the pavement and tried to fight off the encroaching blackness.

After a few moments spent in desperate recovery, she managed to open her eyes and look up. Something still seemed wrong with her vision—it was blurry, swimming in and out of focus... and not only was Shampoo NOT standing threateningly over her, the Amazon was on one knee as well, pale and gasping for breath, braced against the sword as if it was the only thing allowing her to stay even that much upright.

As Akane's vision and thoughts continued to clear, she realized that she wasn't hallucinating this. Shampoo's attack really had drained her that badly. Even though the lavender-haired girl had just managed to stand all the way up again, she was swaying like a willow in the wind.

Feeling the adrenaline rush burn away the worst of her remaining disorientation, Akane got to her feet and charged. So Shampoo didn't want to lose by having her curse triggered? Fine! This way would be much better anyway!

She was only five steps away when Shampoo yanked the sword up, around, and across in a move that sent Akane jerking wildly to the side, tumbling and falling to the ground, offense discarded in an instant as she desperately twisted to avoid the blade. If the stroke had fallen it would have smashed into her head just above her hairline, Akane sensed through a surge of horror—surely a fatal blow even if Shampoo hadn't recovered enough to put her usual strength behind it.

"Stupid, you call yourself warrior?" Shampoo growled, though in truth the anger and the question were directed toward herself as much as Akane. She'd messed up badly on her first attack, spending far more strength than should have been necessary for such an effect. She should have had all the energy she needed to follow up immediately on her enemy's vulnerability. Definitely more practice was in order. But for now, first things first. "Ranma never make such stupid mistake as that. And only idiot would think I do something that he never forgive." The Amazon opened her eyes wide and blinked them at Akane, then deliberately ran one finger down the edge of the sword that had nearly struck her, pressing down hard and yet not drawing blood. It was the unsharpened edge, Akane realized.

"Don't talk to me about Ranma!" she yelled as she stood again, finding enough anger to ignore the fear.

"You think you stop me? You think anything you say cut any ice with Shampoo? Let me give you the clue you need for so long, Akane—world and life is bigger than you and what you want." Shampoo didn't really need to stall for more time at this point; her strength was still returning, but she had already recovered enough to be able to defeat the other girl with no tricks or special techniques needed. But she still wanted to say this. "I going to do exactly what Ranma and me want. Now go home or Shampoo will make you wish you did."

"You wanted me to let go of the hose, and I did," Akane snarled back. "Why don't you let go of that sword and fight me fair and square?"

The Amazon shook her head, allowing herself a mocking smile. "Okay." And with that, Shampoo returned the weapon to storage and charged.

-xxxxxxxxxxxxxx-

As Soun and Genma weaved their way toward home, the stockier of the two was congratulating himself. It had been an enjoyable afternoon at the bar, but Genma himself had consumed only enough alcohol to be pleasantly buzzed while pretending to keep pace with Soun drink-for-drink. Old distraction techniques that Soun would have been expecting, and never would have fallen for, at the Go table had worked perfectly in the unusual setting. As a result, the Tendo patriarch was, if not three sheets to the wind, definitely at least one and five-eighths. Outwardly Genma matched his friend's stumbling, weaving path, giving enough evidence to satisfy Soun that his friend was just as plastered as he was, while inwardly the Saotome master gloated and rubbed his hands.

He was going to absolutely _slaughter_ Soun at Shogi today! Anything Goes Drunken Gaming Fu, where the unpredictability factor works the other way around!

As they entered the front gate of the Tendo homestead, Soun warbling an old love song and Genma wondering whether an adaptation of this new Saotome Secret Technique might let him get a few sparring victories over Ranma, they were intercepted by the eldest and youngest Tendo daughters. Kasumi gently but firmly took control of Soun, leading him into the house toward bed and a nice nap.

However, before Genma could protest the loss of his afternoon of effortless victories, Akane had grabbed hold of his gi and was dragging him around to the dojo. Once they were inside she released him, coming around to stand directly in front of him and stare at him with anger and determination burning in her eyes.

Wondering with more than a little dread just what he'd done now—or what old mistake had come back to haunt him—Genma asked, "What is it, Akane? Did you want something?" Even as he spoke the words, though, something clicked. The anger Akane was registering didn't seem to be directed at him.

She didn't answer at first, just stood there breathing deeply, clenching and unclenching her fists. Genma took the opportunity for a more probing study of the youngest Tendo. She was wearing her typical yellow gi, freshly laundered. One of her palms was skinned, but that was the extent of any injuries Genma could sense. Whatever had left her in this mood, it hadn't had any impact on her physical well-being.

Genma's inspection ended with a grunt, as Akane snapped out her explanation. "I want you to train me. Make me good enough to beat Shampoo for real."

-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx-

Author's notes

One of the big issues in this chapter, as I see it, is the characterization I'm using for Akane. Considering that these are deep-seated psychological issues that none of the characters know themselves or each other well enough to truly understand, there's only so much I can do within the context of the story itself to state clearly how I see her. So let me take this moment to speak directly to you the readers, and clear up some potential misunderstandings.

I'm not trying to say Akane cares more for Ryoga than for Ranma. Quite the opposite in fact. The reason she treats Ryoga, and other guys, better than Ranma is due to something I believe to be an integral part of her character: Akane Tendo makes an excellent friend, and a horrible love interest.

Consider her actions throughout the series. Akane is loyal, kind, and supportive (also clueless, but oh well) to Ryoga, and to Shinnosuke (although there's more than just friendship at work there, there's also the debt she owes him). There are times in which the same is true between Akane and Ranma, but that is by no means the constant state. If Akane's relationship with Ryoga has any examples of the insecurity, misunderstanding, jealousy, mistrust, denial, paranoia, rigid attempts at controlling, and unfair blame that mark her dealings with Ranma, I cannot think of them now. But those things are in her relationship with Ranma because she does care that strongly about him—and is utterly unready for those kinds of feelings.

Although in a way those things are also there because, as strongly as she does care for Ranma, it isn't strong enough yet. The Reversal Jewel episode shows this. Not until Akane wears the jewel right-side up, the position to **strengthen** feelings of love, is she able to forget jealousy and speak kindly, openly, and fearlessly to Ranma. And as soon as the artifact comes off, she smacks him through the window and into the trash.

Hope nobody was too put off by how quickly Akane's horror at the thought of Ranma dying in battle vanished during her talk with Ryoga. I'm taking the view that the life she's lived for the past year and more has to have had a profound impact on her (even if the original series often short-changes us on character growth and change -). She has seen Ranma put himself in harm's way time and time again, going up against people who are seriously out for his blood. A possible accident... that didn't happen and now never will... from the guy she considers a good friend and really does trust... something like that just doesn't stack up to the kind of stuff that really will get her worried for Ranma's safety.

I'll make another character apologia here, regarding Ukyo's willingness to use Shampoo's new curse against her when she never (as far as I can recall) exploited the old one. I do not believe Ukyo would have been willing to go that far if Shampoo had brought back 1) no water at all from Jusenkyo, 2) a cure for Ranma, or 3) water from both Man and Falcon springs and let Ranma choose. It is what Ukyo sees as a despicable (and threatening) act in trying to tie Ranma to the Amazon that gives her the necessary outrage to take that step. Inspiration for this development came from a fanfiction forum thread by Ed Simons, concerning which Jusenkyo curses Ukyo knew about in the original series.

Another couple of acknowledgements relating to Ukyo: her dialogue with Ranma about what Jusenkyo curse she'd choose if she had to take one was inspired by the Altered Destinies tale A Scary Thought, in which Ukyo actually does have a Jusenkyo Wolf curse. And please, for goodness' sake don't think you're reading my personal opinions of Ukyo in Shampoo's derogatory speech. That was the attitude I thought she would have, not my own. It's actually more of a mark against Shampoo, that she would so easily dismiss someone as 'stupid' for not seeing things just because they're so obvious to the Amazon. But let's face it—the vast majority of the characters are self-centered to one degree or another.

Thanks to Beer-Monster, Nemesis Zero, and Ed Simons for prereading. Hope everyone has enjoyed this chapter, remember that if you haven't read my other stories you can find them by clicking on the link to my profile, and I'll see you next time.


	5. After the Rain Has Fallen, part 2

Dream of the Earthbound

A Ranma ½ fanfic by Aondehafka

Disclaimer: the Ranmaverse characters owned by Rumiko Takahashi, and all that obligatory stuff. This story based on the anime, not the manga.

* * *

Chapter 5: After the Rain Has Fallen, part 2

* * *

It had taken him nearly three hours to find the thunderstorm. Beneath him the clouds boiled and raged, lashing the sea with wind and rain. Lightning whistled from cloud to cloud, powerfully enough that at times he not only heard the crash of thunder, he felt the barest hint of a discharge, the slightest static echo across his feathers. It wouldn't have been perceptible if he was in human form (of course, if he had been in human form in his current position he'd have had much bigger things to worry about), but from the very beginning Ranma had known how much more sensitive to weather and the sky in general his new body was.

He flew now at what that form's instincts told him was nearly the lowest possible safe height above the storm. High enough to escape any dangerous winds, and certainly out of reach of the rain, hail, and lightning, but low enough, close enough, that the furor seemed close at hand. The violence of the storm was comforting at this distance, so near, and yet too far away to reach out and break over him.

It made a welcome contrast to the events of the morning. Most of Ranma's first blistering anger was gone by now, leeched away by the impersonal fury of the elements below him, but some still remained. He didn't think that was likely to change anytime soon either, no matter how exhilarating and enjoyable it was to roam the skies. "Kuno, you idiot. Why the heck did you have to get this stupid idea anyway?" he demanded of the air. "And couldn't you have once, just _once_, listened when somebody showed you you weren't on the right track!"

Even as he asked these questions, though, another part of his mind was calling himself seventeen different kinds of an idiot. To think that he'd expected Tatewaki Kuno to give up an idea he'd gotten firmly in his head, no matter how logical or reasonable a counterargument was supplied... especially an idea that would result in Ranma Saotome getting doused with cold water? He sighed as best he could in his current body. "Talk about ignoring the lessons I should've already learned, from how things have happened before now."

He brooded on that for awhile, in the meantime deciding that he'd followed the storm for long enough. Bending one wing and tilting the arc of his body, Ranma swung in a long lazy curve that set him flying back toward the Japanese mainland. The irony did not escape him, that he was leaving behind a storm that couldn't touch him, in order to sail back toward troubles that could. Furinkan in general and Tatewaki in particular were certain to become a bigger nuisance after this. Akane would undoubtedly become even more worried and overprotective—not that that one was wholly unpleasant, but still... and Ranma didn't even want to think about how his father might react. Outsmarted by a Kuno... he could almost hear the lamentations now.

"Maybe I can keep him from finding out..." Ranma mused dubiously. "Akane might worry for me, but that don't mean she'd feel like she has to tell my old man about this. And with Pop and Mr. Tendo back in town I'm getting an allowance again, so that oughta help out with Nabiki. Let's just hope nobody says anything before I make it back home..." With that in mind, he poured on the speed, going from letting the wind do the work to actively exerting himself.

He'd covered roughly a quarter mile of sky before his pace slowed again, slowed even further than it had been before. His thoughts weren't exactly racing either, but they were progressing at a steady, unhindered pace. Ranma thought back over many of the things that had happened in his life, continuing a line of thought that he'd followed for quite a long way six days ago. Back then he'd been thinking about his mother, and how much it sucked that she wasn't yet going to be able to see the family she'd been awaiting for so long. She would have to go on worrying and hoping and praying that her son would be someone she could be proud of, and he had cursed the fact. It had taken several dozen miles of sky, but he had eventually begun thinking about his past and some of the mistakes he'd made, and realized that maybe there were a few more things that he ought to work through before reuniting with Nodoka. After all, it wouldn't do much good to hurry back to her if it was only going to end up causing her more pain.

As he'd told Shampoo, that was something he'd come to terms with. He had made mistakes in the past, he knew he hadn't handled many of the crazy situations as well as he should have. He'd ignored some problems, misunderstood others, and tried to wing his way through yet more of them without anything more than optimism and a shortsighted desire to fight or squirm his way past whatever the latest irritation was. And so many things had gone unresolved because of it!

Ranma couldn't really form a frown of stony determination in his current form, but he tried anyway. Forget begging Akane and bribing Nabiki into silence! Let his father find out what had happened at Furinkan today! If the old man got too obnoxious, Ranma would just take it out of his hide in their next ten sparring sessions, reminding Genma as forcefully as he had to that one Jusenkyo-influenced fluke victory by Kuno didn't make Ranma Saotome any less of a man among men!

He gave out a long, fiery screech and deliberately jumped into another air current, abandoning his previous Nerima-bound course. No need or reason to hurry back home. What would happen, would happen. For now, he was going to stay out here awhile longer, and enjoy to the fullest the best gift anybody had ever given him. Stressful meetings could wait.

"RANMA, PREPARE TO... die..."

His body was moving in automatic evasion before the fourth pseudo-syllable had succeeded the third. Not until he'd sideslipped across and down seventy feet of sky did the curious nature of the battle-cry dawn on him. It had been Ryoga, that had been immediately apparent even though this was the first time he'd heard his rival's new cursed form's voice. But what was equally clear, through the translation effect of Jusenkyo's magic, was that the Lost Bird's threat had gone from furious to halfhearted to forgotten even before it could be completed.

Confused and wary, Ranma nonetheless flapped his way closer to Ryoga's revealed location, stopping just far enough away that he could still pretend it wasn't obvious Ryoga's cursed form was larger than his. "Hey, Ryoga. What's with letting the death-threat die out like that? You didn't chicken out, did ya?"

"HOW DARE YOU—huh?" Ryoga's renewed fury was sidetracked as he watched his rival make some bizarre motion with his right wing, utterly destroying the balance of his flight and causing him to spill down through several yards of air.

_'Will you get a grip, moron!' _Ranma demanded of himself. _'For crying out loud, I was just thinking about how much of a mistake it is to keep on doing the same stuff over and over again without thinking! And as soon as Ryoga shows up I shoot off the old Saotome Get 'Em Good And Riled technique? With what I owe him? Nuh-uh, no way, not today.'_ Resolving that once he was back in human form he'd give himself the smack upside the head that he couldn't quite manage just now, Ranma flapped back to his previous position relative to Ryoga.

"Uh... sorry, man. Force of habit," Ranma explained, trying to find the words to express what he really needed to. "That ain't what I meant to say."

"Go on," Ryoga replied, doing his best to hide reluctance with righteous indignation. Inside, though, he was already regretting this meeting. He had every intention of beating his rival to a pulp, but he couldn't do that in the current circumstances. _'It's too bad Jusenkyo makes us understand each other when we're like this,'_ he grumbled to himself. _'He wasn't even really saying anything, but I still knew that screech was him as clear as day. And I just HAD to go ahead and let him know I was here, when all I can do right now is either listen to more of his insults or run away.'_ Ryoga was still trying to decide which of those was the lesser of two evils.

Uncertain as to why Ryoga was holding back like this, but unwilling to push his luck, Ranma quickly said, "About our fight. You know, when I told you that this new curse would wear off after awhile?"

"You mean when you lied through your teeth just so you could try to take me down with you?"

"For the record, I figured it would be me winning when you took the worst of the attack, not a double KO," Ranma snapped. "But... yeah. Even if it'd worked out like I thought, it was going too far. I'm sorry."

It was more of an apology than Ryoga had ever expected to get. That was not to say that it had gone far enough. "And?"

"And what?"

"Is that all you've got to say?" Ryoga demanded. "All you've got to apologize for? That was a low blow, Ranma, but at least it was just the same kind of thing you've pulled before. Just trying to win a fight. That's nothing compared to the other stuff you dumped on me!"

Ranma's eyes narrowed. "You mean, the stuff I pointed out to you about what you were doing and what it really meant? Exactly what kind of apology are you looking for there?"

"Damn you, I told you before!" Ryoga shouted. "You didn't even bother to say any of that stuff until it was already too late for me to fix it myself! You just waited until after you and Shampoo had already fixed things up nice and neat between you. Would it have been so hard to let me be the one to make the decision?"

"Kinda seems like the answer there is 'Yes'. Or are you forgetting that Shampoo only dumped the water on you after she offered it and you turned her down?"

"What kind of difference is that supposed to make? She didn't say anything about that. All she said was, 'Now you no have to worry about Akane find out you secret, turn you into bad excuse for sweet and sour pork.' That's a pretty far cry from the stuff you could have said to me, Ranma!"

"No, I couldn't have," Ranma snapped back. "You know, it's kind of flattering in a way, you thinking that all along I've seen all this stuff crystal clear. It's also insulting as hell in another, and it's just plain stupid to boot. Since it's obvious I cared about what you were doing with, and to, Akane, if I did understand all that stuff since day one why wouldn't I have said it before now?"

"I don't know! Why didn't you?

"For crying out loud, will you stop yelling and start thinking?" Ranma shouted. "I didn't see it any better than you did. Don't try to hand me any bull, Ryoga—you knew all along that what you were doing as P-chan wasn't right. I know there's times you felt guilty about it. But you didn't see how bad it really was, and neither did I. Not until Shampoo finally put a stop to it. Yeah, I had asked her to offer you the rest of the water, cause I could see at least clearly enough to know the P-chan stuff needed to stop. But that was really as far as I thought about it until afterward. She busted up the old pattern, went farther than I thought I'd meant for her to go, and that was what got me thinking about it. That was when I figured out all the stuff I said to you. I guess it was easier to see once I was looking back on it afterward, rather than having it right up in my face."

After finishing the last sentence, Ranma paused for a few seconds, partly to recover his breath, partly to judge his rival's reaction. "You know, I am both surprised and impressed that you let me finish all that without butting in, Ryoga."

Ryoga snorted, although the sound didn't carry across the yards of sky separating him from Ranma. "Far be it from me to interrupt when Ranma Saotome is admitting he made a mistake."

"You want to return the favor now, P-chan?" Ranma retorted. "In case you didn't realize, it wasn't a lot of fun to have you throw all that in my face back then. Like I knew all that stuff from the beginning and just sat on it, not caring about anything except hitting you with it at the worst possible moment. It wasn't like that and you should've known it all along."

"You're right, Ranma. Sorry for overestimating you."

"Oh, hardy har har. Laugh it up, Chuckles, but don't forget I owe you a rematch. You wouldn't want me to ask for it right here and now, would you? It's pretty obvious which one of us has got more flying experience." Ryoga's passage through the air wasn't exactly ungainly, but it was clear to Ranma that he had attained much more familiarity with his cursed form than had his rival.

"Shut up! This is just my second long flight, and I wouldn't even be doing it if my pack hadn't disappeared between the sprinkler hitting me and when I finally got out of my shirt!"

Ranma stared at the other transformed teen for several moments, then swept his gaze to the ocean below, to the clouds beyond, and to the landmass of Japan still a half hour's flight away. "You're up here because you're trying to find your way back to your backpack?"

"Laugh and die," Ryoga grated. Then, qualifying the statement, he said, "Once we're back to our normal selves, at least."

Forcefully swallowing a remark about Ryoga, 'normal', and paradox, Ranma said, "Okay. So... this is your second real flight. Are you starting to see how much better this is than your old curse, even aside from the whole Akane issue?"

"Better?" Ryoga echoed incredulously. "How's it supposed to be better? Okay, maybe nobody's going to put me on their lunch menu anymore, but it's not like this curse didn't come with its own huge problem!"

"Huge problem?" It was Ranma's turn to repeat something in clear disbelief. "What're you talking about?"

"Are you out of your tiny little mind? You know how hard it is for me to find my way anywhere, Ranma! Do you have any idea how much worse it is when you've got the whole sky to get lost in?"

"You mean..." Ranma almost couldn't believe he was saying this, "you don't _like_ to fly?"

This time, Ryoga's snort was loud enough that both transformed teens heard it. "What's there to like! Do you have any idea how much of my life I've spent on the road, wandering around with no idea where I am? Do you know what it feels like not to have any idea where I can find anybody I know? Let me tell you, Ranma, it's a lot worse than any of the wimpy little problems you complain about!"

With serious effort, the Saotome heir kept his response to that within the silence of his own thoughts. Ryoga blowing off Ranma's problems was irritating and unjustified, but it didn't diminish the other's own complaint.

Meanwhile, the Lost Boy was still speaking. "This is like somebody took a good long look at my life, figured out what the worst parts of it were... at least, the parts that weren't my own fault..." he mumbled the amendment, then his voice returned to normal volume, "and deliberately extended them and made them worse!" Ryoga still remembered the incredible naiveté with which he had thought of flying quickly to Jusenkyo in order to keep his old curse from ever returning. At the time of that half-formed, half-baked plan, he had not yet experienced just what flight was like for a Hibiki. "The last time this happened, it took me three days to find my way back to my campsite. And there's no reason to think it won't be that bad or worse each time. Days spent all alone, not even _human_, trying to find my way back to somewhere I can recognize. Without even being able to stop and get bad directions from somebody! Damn it all, Ranma, I'm _tired_ of being so alone!"

"I... Ryoga, I'm sorry... I, I never thought this new curse could be as bad as your old one. Not in a different way anyway," Ranma amended.

"It... it's not. Not quite as bad," Ryoga said, the words sounding as if he'd had to extract them with heavy machinery. "This way hurts me. The other way, I was hurting someone else." As if to hurry past that thought, he quickly said, "And of course I always had to worry about that nutcase klepto skater stumbling across 'Charlotte' again, or getting cooked for somebody's dinner..."

"You know, Shampoo actually did that once, and you lived through it just fine," Ranma pointed out.

"Do you think I want to be reminded of that?" Ryoga raged, completely trampling his rival's follow-up sentence. "If you're trying to make me feel better about having this curse instead of the pig, that's not the way to do it!"

Although within the privacy of his own mind Ranma wondered why the heck not, what he said was, "Actually, I was trying to lead up to something better."

"Better, huh? This isn't another stupid joke, is it?" Ryoga asked dubiously.

"No. What I meant was, you could probably say Shampoo owes you for that time, and I guess she and I together owe you something too now. Even if it was because of something that was mostly your fault." Ranma quickly continued speaking, before Ryoga's growl could transform into outright abuse. Based on what Shampoo had told him, about how the Jusenkyo laws used to be and how they had changed, his idea shouldn't be a problem now. "I'll get with her and ask her to have someone at home mail some Nannichuan out here for you."

Ryoga's entire body shuddered to frozen immobility, which of course sent him dropping like a stone. Ranma zipped down after him, glad to see that the shock of the fall quickly restored his rival to motion. In fact, once he recovered Ryoga was flying noticeably more smoothly than before, and Ranma deduced that the other was now operating on pure instinct. _'Lord knows it's not that hard to overload his mind,'_ the Saotome heir thought cynically.

"A- are you serious?" Ryoga eventually gasped.

"Yep." In fact, he could have her order enough water to also remove his father's Panda curse, and even have some left over if Ranma himself ever had drastic need to get rid of his own. The water's magic wouldn't last forever, of course, but for Genma and Ryoga it wouldn't have to.

"You'd do that? _She'd_ do that?"

"For you, no, probably she wouldn't. I'm sure I can get her to agree, though," Ranma assured, trying not to picture the number of dates he was surely going to have to agree on. For a request of this magnitude, it wouldn't just be Shampoo he was asking, he'd have to go through Cologne as well. For that matter, since this would be eliminating Shampoo's potential winter break trip to China with him, the lavender-haired girl herself would certainly take more convincing than normal.

But it was the right thing to do. And although she could never hear about it, Ranma believed it was something that his mother would be proud of—at least, as long as one didn't factor in the earlier, less-than-optimal actions that had led to this moment of decision.

"I... I don't know what to say..."

"That's easy enough," Ranma retorted. "Say that after this we're both free and clear of anything and everything related to you going to Jusenkyo. No more 'Ranma, because of you I've seen hell!', no more blamin' me for that stuff or dragging it back out as a reason to attack me. You and I both got better reasons to challenge each other than that, and I want it to finally lie down in the past and die."

Ryoga paused for a moment, thinking of all the other ways his rival had managed to irritate the crap out of him in times past. Even without this one, there would definitely be no shortage of reasons to give Ranma a good thrashing. "Yeah, okay. When and if you get Shampoo to do that for me, I accept."

"Sounds good to me." They flew in silence for awhile, before Ranma oh-so-innocently asked, "You sure you don't want to have just one challenge match like this? I bet I can kick your tail feathers all the way to the Arctic Circle."

"No way."

"Come on, you big chicken. Don't be such a scaredy-bat. Are you a man or a grouse?"

"Forget it, Ranma! Akane asked me to promise that I wouldn't do anything that could get either of us hurt in our cursed forms, and I'm going to keep my word no matter how many stupid insults you try! And those were pretty darn stupid, let me tell you."

Ranma blinked, not really even hearing the slur against his combat incitement technique. "Because Akane asked you to be careful, you're not going to attack me?"

"That's right."

"Is that why you pulled back from the whole 'Ranma, prepare to die' thing earlier? That's why you've listened to everything I've said?"

"You got it."

"Hot damn, the tomboy finally got overprotective at exactly the right time," Ranma marveled.

"Ranma, you jerk! I might not be able to fight you, and I might be willing to swallow insults against me, but I won't listen to you talk bad about Akane!" And with that, Ryoga made a sharp right turn into a dive, quickly picking up airspeed and disappearing inside a cloud.

"Wait, you moron!" Ranma squawked, following quickly in Ryoga's wake. "Don't ya want me to lead you back to the dojo? You didn't even let me tell you about the soap I've got for you! Ryoga! Where are you?"

He spent the next hour searching the skies for the other boy, achieving exactly nothing.

* * *

Kasumi paused on the threshold of the dojo, her hand outstretched to the frame but not yet sliding the door open. She listened, hearing the sound of her sister's kiais and the crunch of shattered brick. Akane's mood was plain to tell even from this distance.

The eldest Tendo daughter waited, listening as her little sister worked her way through more stacks of bricks. Each new batch of materials destroyed took just a little more of the edge off Akane's anger. By the time she'd heard ten more stacks bite the dust, Kasumi judged that she ought not to wait any longer. By no means had Akane recovered her good spirits, but at least she ought to be calm enough to listen to what Kasumi had to say.

Taking a deep breath to fortify herself, and pushing away thoughts of the last time she'd confronted Akane about something that happened in the dojo, Kasumi slid the door open and entered. "Akane, are you in here?" she called, not as a serious question but rather to announce her presence.

"What is it, Kasumi? HIII-YA!" Another stack of bricks went to that great construction site in the sky.

"I need to talk with you about what happened today," Kasumi answered.

Akane heaved a bitter, disgusted sigh. She would rather not have had to remember those events just now. However, though she would have thrown Ranma out in a heartbeat if _he_ were the one asking, she wouldn't blow off either of her sisters—and besides, as sweet and gentle as Kasumi was, maybe talking about this with her would help Akane feel a little better. Surely she could at least count on sympathy. "Okay," she said, heading over to the wall and sitting down with her back against it.

Kasumi joined her there, kneeling down and looking her sister in the eye. "What happened after you left the house?" She didn't think it would make any difference in what she'd come here to say, but it would be better to hear Akane out first.

"I went to make sure Shampoo wasn't chasing after Ranma," Akane said with a scowl. "He's already had a bad enough time today, he didn't need that to make it worse."

"She wasn't, was she?" It was a guess on Kasumi's part. Certainly Akane had met up with someone and the encounter had progressed poorly, but Kasumi didn't know just who. She could picture Akane's actions and attitude resulting from a confrontation with either Shampoo or Cologne, albeit for different reasons. Shampoo seemed more likely, though; Cologne might have had a few things to say that little sister wouldn't want to hear, but the old woman didn't usually push anyone as far as this.

"No, she was just getting back from a delivery. Too late to bug Ranma, but she was just in time to dump on me and treat me like I'm nothing next to her," Akane seethed. "Maybe I can't beat her now, but that's not how it's going to be forever!"

So her suspicions were correct—it had been Shampoo. "Are you sure you're all right, little sister?" She well remembered the mood Akane had been in when she left for the Cat Café. Kasumi wasn't optimistic enough to think that it hadn't come down to a fight with Ranma's Amazon friend. Akane didn't seem physically hurt, but... "She didn't use any other trick like that special shampoo, did she?"

"No, she didn't. I'm fine, Kasumi. Please just leave it," Akane said tightly, attempting through sheer force of will to block the recent memories. She'd given it her all, striking at Shampoo with all the speed and skill and strength she could muster, and the Amazon just danced around her like a ghost, blocking and dodging with no apparent effort, Shampoo's own blows striking her at will. That the Amazon had just brushed the heel of her hand against Akane had only made it worse, the feather-light mocking touch stinging worse than an actual punch would have. "It wasn't even a real fight anyway." That last sentence cost her quite a bit to utter, and only in the hope of relieving the concern on Kasumi's face did Akane make the sacrifice.

"Is fighting her for real so important to you?" Kasumi asked sadly.

"Of course it is!" Akane yelled. "There's no way I'm going to take this anymore!"

"And so you came back home and waited for Father and Mr. Saotome to return. And once they did you went straight to Mr. Saotome and asked him to train you." Kasumi gave her sister the most sorrowful gaze she could muster. "Akane, do you realize what you've done?"

Akane gave her sister the most confused gaze she muster. "Um, yes. Ranma is good enough to beat Shampoo easily, and I'm asking the sensei who trained him to do the same thing for me."

"And what about your own father?" Kasumi hinted.

For one moment longer the confusion remained on Akane's face, and then it began to drain away. Kasumi watched, suppressing a sigh as the previous emotion transformed into a look of stubbornness mixed with the barest tinge of worry. She continued, speaking gently but firmly, "I know it's been a while since he trained you—"

"A while? Try over a year!"

"But that doesn't change what's important here. You are Akane Tendo, the heir to the Tendo School of Anything Goes, and Father is still the school's head. How can you just turn away to study under someone else? Don't you think that's why Mr. Saotome didn't want to agree to this?"

"He didn't say he wouldn't train me, Kasumi, and he didn't say he didn't want to. He just said he needed some time to think about it. Considering that he and Dad had just gotten back from the bar and you had to put Dad to bed to sleep it off, I don't think that's any big deal." Although in all honesty, part of Akane's anger did stem from the fact that Genma hadn't given immediate assent and started working right away on teaching her a technique powerful enough to take down Shampoo. Still, she could give him the rest of the day to recover from his carousing. "He just needs some time to think about what he's going to teach me."

"Or perhaps he's giving you time to think this over, to see for yourself that it isn't as simple as you first thought. Little sister, think about what you're doing. You haven't even talked to Father about this, haven't spoken with him at all about learning from someone else. What would it say about the school, your family, and your place in both of them?"

"What does it say that Dad quit training me right after the Saotomes got here?" Akane countered. "You're looking at things that aren't really in the picture, Kasumi. I need to get better. That's all there is to say."

"No, it isn't! Akane, this is wrong. Are you even stopping to think about how this might hurt Father?"

"How about how Shampoo could hurt me any time she wants?" Akane said, biting the words off. "What about what Dad did? Does he think I'm good enough already? Because I'm not! Does it mean there's nothing left for him to teach me? Then I need to go to someone who can! You know how the Saotomes did it, big sister. Mr. Saotome took Ranma on the road, hitting a lot of different places. That wasn't just training grounds, Ranma studied under different senseis, a bunch of them. It didn't make him any less of a student of Saotome Anything Goes, it just meant he was pulling in new bits and pieces to work into the style! That's what Anything Goes is supposed to be about. Adaptability and growth and learning new things." Although she couldn't remember her father ever saying it outright like that, both Genma and Happosai had in the past. Always to Ranma, though, never directly to her... Akane paused, taking several deep breaths, then continued, "Maybe I haven't done so good at that, maybe..." her fists clenched tightly in her lap, "maybe you could even say I stank at it before now. I've tried to learn new stuff when I practice on my own, but that's obviously not good enough. I'm not good enough. And I'm not putting up with it any longer!"

"Akane, you keep talking about yourself, and only focusing on the martial arts side of this. I'm talking about honor and respect, not just for a sensei, but for your father!"

"If this isn't about martial arts, why are we even talking right now?" Akane retorted. "Kasumi, not only are you not a martial artist, you're too nice to thinkabout fighting someone. You even treat Shampoo like she's a perfectly nice, reasonable person who there's no reason for anyone not to want around! This really isn't something you can understand, big sister." Akane's expression softened, and she quickly dipped her head in a bow. "Please don't take offense."

"I'm certainly not going to get offended by any of that," Kasumi said quietly. "And you're right, I don't see this the same way you do. But since we see different things here, don't you think maybe you should consider what I've said? Are you so sure you aren't missing or misunderstanding anything here?"

"I'm sure I have to do this." Akane's tone informed her older sister in no uncertain terms that, though the conversation might continue, the debate was over. "If Dad has a problem with it, then let him come to me and tell me why I shouldn't do it. But I'm not backing down anymore. Not for him, not for Ranma, not for anyone."

* * *

"A warrior's path:

To rise to all challenges.

Furinkan awaits."

Soun Tendo stood in the light of morning, staring off into the distance. There were far too many buildings in the way for him to actually see the high school from here, but he pictured it in his mind's eye. Pictured too the challenges that might be there, the battles and the trials that would likely be the result of what had happened yesterday. He had heard the news late last evening, how the end of the school day had shown Ranma's new curse to all of Furinkan. "Hardly surprising the boy was none too enthusiastic about returning there today," Soun muttered sagely. He wondered whether Ranma would have left in a better mood if Soun had been able to finish the haiku and share it before his daughter and son-in-law-to-be had left. "But this too is a martial artist's duty."

"Indeed it is, Tendo," Genma said solemnly, appearing unannounced behind him.

"It stirs the soul, doesn't it? Brings the mind back to our own younger days, and the challenges we faced. It does the heart good in a way," Soun mused. "To know that the new generation has picked up where the old left off, fighting their own battles and walking the path of martial righteousness with their own feet."

"Mm-hm. I'm sure Ranma won't much like some of what will happen at Furinkan, now that everybody knows about his new curse. But it should lead to many new chances for the boy to learn new skills and grow as a fighter." Genma paused, searching for just the right words to lead the conversation away from Ranma to another member of the new generation of Anything Goes martial artists.

"After all, what does not kill us makes us stronger. Right, Saotome?"

"Yes, that's true. If we let it, anyway."

"Well, I think we both know there's no need to worry about _that_!" Soun let out a long, hearty laugh. "That's one lesson you taught Ranma very well indeed."

Sighing and bracing himself, Genma replied, "True. But I wasn't talking about my boy there, Tendo. I was more concerned about Akane."

"Akane? What do you mean?"

"Did you know she had a fight with Shampoo yesterday?" Before Soun could do more than blanch at this news, Genma's hand shot out and clenched reassuringly on the Tendo patriarch's shoulder. "Remember, you saw her for yourself this morning, and she's fine. Shampoo didn't even hit her once, from the little bit of description I was able to get out of her." He had received the strong impression he'd be better off pulling teeth from a crocodile than trying to pry more details of the fight out of Akane.

Soun heaved a sigh of relief. "Thank goodness. Did she win then? Perhaps by triggering Shampoo's curse?"

"I don't know. I don't think so. Not considering the mood she was in when we got back yesterday," Genma said. "She was as angry as I've ever seen her, Tendo. And she was hating the fact that she couldn't fight Shampoo on her own level and win."

"On her own level!" the Tendo patriarch repeated indignantly. "That Amazon comes from a culture where getting in a fight could mean your life whether you win or lose! If you're an outsider, anyway. I'll have to talk to Akane and remind her about that. My precious little girl needs to know she's already better than Shampoo where it really counts."

"Tell her that if you want, but I don't think it's going to make any difference this time. There's only one thing she wants to hear from us, and it isn't 'Give Shampoo one look of disgust and then just walk away.' She made that very clear in the dojo yesterday."

"In the dojo?" Soun echoed. A fuzzy memory swam up from the depths of his mind. "You mean, that was where she dragged you off to when we got home yesterday?"

"Yes, that's right."

"And that's when you heard about this fight and Akane being in a bad mood? She was quiet at breakfast this morning, but she didn't seem particularly unhappy." It should be stated here that Soun's eyes had been on his newspaper at the moment when Akane had sent a fierce, don't-think-I'm-going-to-wait-much-longer look Genma's way. "Come now, Saotome, you're being too much of a worrywart over this. It's not like you to take such a dark outlook, especially over something you can't really remember anyway. You were just as pickled as I was yesterday afternoon."

"No, I wasn't." Genma had hoped not to have to reveal this. He didn't want to spoil this wonderful new stratagem before it could win him at least one afternoon's worth of shogi. Thinking frantically for a few seconds, he was rewarded with an inspiration. "I only pretended to be as far gone as you. That way, Ranma would have underestimated me when I asked him for a sparring match."

Soun blinked. "Then why didn't you let me in on the scheme?"

"Um... um... in order to fool your enemies, er, your opponents, you must first fool your friends. Or something like that."

"Well, all right then."

"In any case, that's not important. What is important is that my judgment was perfectly unimpaired when Akane stood there and asked me to train her to defeat Shampoo."

"She... you... what... that's..." Soun gaped for a few moments, then recovered. "And since your judgment was, as you say, unimpaired, you told her that you couldn't do such a thing. Correct, Saotome?"

Noting the flickering hints of chi in the angles and lines of Soun's face, and recognizing all too easily the traces of a Demon Head ready to form at a moment's notice, Genma chose his words with care. "Considering how peeved she was, I didn't think it was a good idea to tell her anything outright. I told her I'd need some time to think about it."

"Even better," Soun conceded. The chi faded back to invisibility. "Give her some time to cool down and realize that competing with Shampoo like that is a terrible idea."

"Mmmm." Genma packed as much skepticism into the monosyllable as he could. Soun didn't seem to notice. Deciding that subtlety just wasn't going to cut it here, he continued, "You do know how Shampoo and Akane got into the fight yesterday, don't you? Akane went to Shampoo. Not the other way around."

"And once we make it clear how bad an idea that is, she'll—"

"Tendo, will you please listen to me!" Silently Genma cursed Akane for forcing him into a position like this, Shampoo for the recent changes that had his son's real fiancée in such turmoil, and Ranma for not giving the Amazons the heave-ho long ago. For that matter, the Jusenkyo Guide really ought to have known better than to guide two hungry, unfortunate strangers to such a perilous place as the Amazon village. Perhaps he ought to send a scathing letter to the Jusenkyo society... postage due, if they allowed that sort of thing on international mail.

"Listen to what?" Soun's voice broke into Genma's mental ramblings of just who was really at fault here.

"Akane isn't going to take 'No' for an answer. Not this time," he said quietly. "Now, I agree with you that it would be better for her not to fight Shampoo. But she isn't going to let go of the idea anytime soon. I think the best thing to do is go along with what she asked."

"Excuse me?" Soun said sharply, in a tone Genma hadn't heard since the one time the Tendo patriarch had thrown him out as well as his son. The traces of chi were back, more pronounced than before. "Did you just say you want to encourage my daughter in this? To seriously fight a girl who's trained to kill!"

"No, it's not like that!" _'Actually, it's exactly like that.'_ But Genma knew better than to say _that_ out loud. This was no time to try to convince Soun that, win or lose, Akane could fight Shampoo safely. He himself didn't much care for the idea, but since he wasn't an overprotective paranoiac of a parent, he could see clearly enough that Akane going against Shampoo for real wouldn't have such terrible repercussions. Soun, on the other hand... let him have time to get used to the idea of Akane training seriously before Genma tried to convince him that just because Shampoo _could_ put Akane down for good, didn't mean she _would_ make such a stupid blunder. In fact, if the girls only fought one another in formal challenge matches with plenty of witnesses, that would probably be safer than the way things were now.

He still would have been happier if Akane had never made her request, but Genma was going to do the best he could with the hand he had been dealt plus whatever cards he might find up his sleeve. "Think about it this way, Tendo. Akane came to me to learn how to get better than Shampoo. That means I get to set the pace, pick the training, she'll be waiting for me to tell her she's good enough before she tries to take her enemy down!"

"Hmmm... so we're really just buying time for her to get over the worst of her temper..." Soun mused. "Well, that's good, as far as it goes. But this business with Shampoo isn't the only thing I'm concerned about here."

"It's not? What else is there?"

"What happens after you've spent a few weeks teaching her some new tricks? She'll be proud of what she's learned, plus Ranma probably won't miss the chance to tease her about how far behind him she still is. She'll want to prove herself, and that means she might go out looking for trouble! Maybe not Shampoo, maybe she will wait for you to tell her she's ready for that fight. But what if my precious little girl decides she's learned enough to go up against Kodachi Kuno?" Soun still woke up in a cold sweat some nights, remembering the vicious tricks the youngest Kuno had unleashed against Ranma-chan so long ago. What if Akane hadn't twisted her ankle the night before that match? What if she thought she still had something to prove there, and a few weeks of Genma's proposed training prompted her to go after it? It had been hard enough to watch Akane battle it out with Natsume and Kurumi. Only the knowledge that his true daughter's life wasn't on the line, combined with the certainty that Ranma would keep coming back until victory was his, had allowed Soun to handle that crisis as well as he had. "I thought we were agreed that Ranma would handle the serious challenges around here!"

"Maybe I could teach her something that wouldn't have that kind of effect," Genma mused. He had spent a good bit of time yesterday thinking about Akane's request, and pondering how it might impact the bigger picture of his life. There was one last real card he had to play in the game of that bigger picture, a trump he'd held back for a long time now. By no means had he made up his mind on the subject yet, but if he took that route it should be easy to prevent the situation that had Soun so worried. If he handled it right, it might go much further than that. "I need some more time to think about this, old friend. For now, how about this: I'll agree to train Akane, but I'll tell her I need a few days to consider what we'll be working on, where to start and what exercises to use, that sort of thing. That'll give you and me both time to think and talk about what I'll really be showing to her."

"...I guess that's good enough for now," Soun conceded. "But remember, Saotome. If it looks like this is actually going to put Akane in more danger instead of getting her out of it, I'll put a stop to it right away."

"Believe me, that's just the way I want it. I'm not about to let this threaten our promise to unite the schools," Genma reassured him. "In fact, maybe it'll even help out with that." It was by no means a fully-fledged idea yet, but the elder Saotome thought he could sense the beginnings of inspiration fluttering at the edges of his consciousness. If he really did teach _that _to Akane, surely there was a way to use it to bring her and her fiancé closer together...

"Really? How?"

"Give me more time to think it through," Genma repeated. "Neither one of us wants to think about it, but we both know the Amazons came up with a great plan this time and carried it through perfectly. We need a real counterattack, something better than just putting an engagement ring in a box for Ranma to give to Akane." Curse Shampoo and Cologne anyway for posing this much of a threat, and making him work so hard on something that should have been in the bag long ago. Genma didn't mind putting forth whatever effort he needed to help his son grow to mastery of the Art, but with all the dues he'd paid before now in his life, that ought to be the only real concern left to him. Unfortunately, someone seemed not to have delivered that memo to the universe at large.

* * *

The breeze whistled through Ranma's hair as he leapt from rooftop to rooftop. The streets below weren't particularly crowded, were certainly less bustling than they would be in another forty-five minutes, but he didn't feel like limiting himself to them just now.

Part of him was still a little on edge, expecting trouble to jump out and hit him when he least expected it. The feeling had been with him all day at Furinkan, and had only heightened as each class passed without the anticipated furor rearing its head. He'd fully expected to spend the entire day answering questions and dodging water from disbelieving students. Instead most people had kept their distance, though he had gotten plenty of stares.

Hiroshi and Daisuke had been the two biggest exceptions, cornering him at lunch, dragging him away before he could even think about eating with Akane or Ukyo, pulling him off to a secluded area and demanding to know the whole story. Ranma still couldn't make up his mind whether he was ticked off about that conversation or not. The part where they'd lambasted him for willingly giving up something that—according to them—most guys would kill to have... that hadn't left too pleasant a taste in his mouth. On the other hand, despite their initial vehemence the duo had actually listened to his counterargument, and even conceded that having Tatewaki Kuno chase after your 'better half' might be too high a price for a self-respecting guy to pay after all.

He'd also learned from them that Nabiki was selling all the details of this latest change in his life, raking in wads of yen that Ranma knew he'd never see. That was irritating, if not much of a surprise. On the other hand, he'd been surprised and pleased to hear why Kuno hadn't yet put in an appearance today—apparently, Akane had injured him enough to keep him away from class for a day or two. Considering the kind of abuse the kendoist regularly shrugged off, Ranma decided that this unexpected bonus more than outweighed Nabiki's usual profiteering.

Once he'd learned of said profiteering, the general lack of questions had made more sense. Everyone was still buying what Nabiki had to sell. Sooner or later that would wind down, and then he fully expected he'd be receiving more direct attention and interrogation. In fact, it probably would have happened by the end of the day today.

Ranma paused as he landed from his latest jump, and sent one smug glance back over his shoulder. Furinkan was just visible in the distance. Everyone else was still cooped up inside, but he had cut his last class period entirely. Avoiding the paparazzi populace of his school was nice, although Ranma realized he was only delaying the inevitable. Respite for today just meant tomorrow would see him playing catch-up. But since it had to be faced sooner or later, and since there was a very good unrelated reason to skip out early, he might as well enjoy the freedom he had right now.

_'Nope, I don't think Akane would be too happy if I told her I was gonna head to the Amazons' place and talk to Shampoo.'_ At the very least she'd undoubtedly insist on coming along with him, and for what he had to say that was absolutely not acceptable. _'Yeah, that'd be just great. I can see it now—me trying to convince Shampoo to get some Nannichuan shipped here for Ryoga, Akane standing there listening to it all.'_ Once again Ranma found himself grateful that he no longer shared his final class of the day with the youngest Tendo.

At least this way he could speak frankly with Shampoo, discussing the issue of Ryoga and curses without any need for deception or guarding his words. All Akane needed to know was stuff she could hear after the fact: that he'd arranged for Shampoo to wash away what she had done to the Lost Boy. She would certainly be happy to hear that, Ranma knew. Hopefully she'd be happy enough to let slide whatever he'd be promising Shampoo within the next half hour. Ranma knew this wasn't going to come cheap. He hoped she wouldn't hold out for something exorbitant like ten dates. He knew he'd pay even that price if he had to, in order to do this one last thing for Ryoga, but he didn't want to think about the kind of suffering it would entail. _'Akane might be willing to cut me some slack, but all the slack in the world wouldn't let her swallow something like that. I'd just as soon avoid getting flattened like an okonomiyaki.'_

**Ding Ding! Wham!**

"Please tell me this ain't the same roof as last time," he mumbled into the shingles.

"Shampoo eighteen, Ranma nothing." By contrast to Ranma's barely-audible complaint, Shampoo's comment fairly glowed with satisfaction, cheerfulness, and good-natured mischief. Wide-eyed innocence was nowhere to be seen. "I make up for this by let you have all you can eat at restaurant whenever you come by this week." Touching down with one leg, she shifted her bike from Ranma to the roof. "You know, Airen, there one other part of this training I not mention last time."

"Which is?" Ranma inquired as he got to his feet and dusted himself off, wondering whether this impact really had hurt less than the last. Maybe he was just imagining it, but it did kind of seem that way.

"To be aware of incoming attack." Shampoo's expression shifted toward pensiveness. "Ranma make good progress on endurance part, but not seem so good on this one. Not in this training, not in other times when girl is attacking you. Is blind spot maybe?"

Poor social skills notwithstanding, Ranma knew better than to discuss the concept of guys holding back against girls with an Amazon. _'Okay, change the subject, change the subject quick...'_ "Actually I'm glad I ran into you now, Shampoo. Or is it the other way around?" he asked wryly. "I was on my way to your place to talk to you about something."

Shampoo blinked. "Really?" A smile lit up her face like a sunrise, and with ruthless abandon she pushed away all thoughts of the customers waiting for their delivery orders.

"Yep." Ranma paused, taking a look around the general surroundings. This wasn't the highest rooftop in the general vicinity, but it seemed secure enough. He sat down, Shampoo following suit a moment later. "It's about Ryoga. I was hoping you could do something about his curse."

Shampoo blinked again. "We not already have this talking?"

"Not the pig curse. Believe it or not, he found me yesterday when both of us were flying, and we talked for a while. And when I say 'believe it or not'..." Ranma shook his head, still marveling at what he was about to say. "He doesn't like his new curse. He actually doesn't like it, not even a little bit."

The Amazon shrugged. "Ranma expect something else? I did not. Knew all along he would hate this change. You think he just going to shrug and forget about not be able to play as Akane's pet no more?"

"No, it's not that. And it took a lot to pound it through his thick skull, but Ryoga finally agreed that what he'd been doing as P-chan was wrong."

Shampoo gave him one heck of a skeptical stare. She'd seen her beloved do some amazing things, but none quite on the order of the claim he'd just made.

"This isn't about losin' the old curse," Ranma continued. "It's about the new one, and how well it fits him and his life. Or doesn't, I mean. He... I guess I can kinda understand it, the way he explained it, but Shampoo... he really doesn't like to fly. At all."

The Amazon mulled that thought over. It was surprising, though she didn't feel nearly as much shock as Ranma had. Then again, this was primarily because Ranma had fully expected Ryoga to get over his initial fury once he found out what his new form allowed him to do, whereas Shampoo hadn't bothered to give it that much thought. She'd saved her musings for how this action would make things better for Ranma.

Still, it was strange to hear that Ryoga really hadn't found any sort of satisfaction in his new ability. "Why not?" she asked.

"From what he said, it's kind of like it makes his bad sense of direction go into overdrive. Put Ryoga in the sky and give him freedom to go anywhere he chooses, and that's the last time he'll see anybody or anyplace he recognizes for who knows how long." Ranma spoke quietly, still feeling a curious sense of discontinuity. On the one hand, he did feel sorry for Ryoga, especially considering the pain with which the Lost Boy had spoken. On the other, it was still hard to attach such negative concepts to something that was so beneficial in his life. "He told me he's tired of being so alone."

Shampoo considered this in silence for awhile. "Maybe Shampoo understand. Is strange to hear, though," she said. "For what flying like for you and me, strange to think it so bad for Ryoga."

"Yeah, well, you know ol' Bacon Breath. He kinda gets a lot of things backwards," Ranma said. "Guess this is just another one of those."

"Maybe..." Shampoo said. "Now that Ranma say it like that, though, it make me wonder..."

"Huh? Wonder what?"

"Wonder how many other people would think like that, if they got Falcon curse too. Even without stupid Ryoga problem with getting lost in sky. Maybe many people would not like at all, maybe even most would not see it as such good thing," Shampoo mused. It was kind of a nice thought, to consider that she and Ranma might have even more in common through their reaction to this curse, tempting to believe that it was even stronger proof of how right they were for each other. Then, remembering something Cologne had mentioned, she amended, "No, wait. That not right. Great-Grandmother say that now Jusenkyo open to Amazons to use, many of them also learning to fly."

"I kinda suspect it's just Ryoga who'd have a problem with it," Ranma said. "Well, maybe Akane too. Stubborn as she is and as ticked as she's been about all this stuff, I don't think she could admit a Falcon curse was a good thing even if having one saved her life."

"Hmmph. Shampoo not so sure about that," the Amazon grumbled. "Akane would probably jump for chance to take own curse. That way she could follow after Ranma whenever you go to fly, stay right beside you and make sure you not doing anything she not like."

"Do NOT go there," Ranma commanded, fighting off a brief chill.

"You not like the idea, right?"

"Gee, let me think," he said, with sarcasm thick enough to spread on toast. "What's the best part of flying? It's being up there where nobody's gonna dump any of that stuff on me, nobody's gonna try and tell me what I gotta do and what I can't. It's making my own way and my own choices, without Akane or Pop or anybody tryin' to cut them down to just the ones they're happy with. It's the best time to myself I ever get."

"Is kind of the same for me," Shampoo replied quietly. "Japan is so different from home village, so full of people, choked full it seem. Sometimes feel like Shampoo is choking too. But to get up there, alone, away from all that... is freedom and recovery. Medicine even better than anything Great-Grandmother keep in her cabinet."

A moment of wistful silence stretched between both teens. Shampoo eventually broke it. "Ranma?"

Somewhat concerned by the tentative way she'd spoken, he replied, "Yeah?"

"Shampoo hear what you just say about how is good to get time to own self while you fly. Was going to ask if we do that together again soon, but if it really not any good for you... should Shampoo just forget it?" It cost her a good bit to say that, but the last thing she wanted to do was cut down on the advantage giving him this gift had gained her. There would be plenty of time for togetherness in the future, Shampoo reminded herself once again. It was the thought that allowed her to stomach the fact that Ranma had to stay at the Tendos' place for the present, and it would let her accept it if he didn't want to share more flights with her anytime soon.

"I don't mind the company once in a while," Ranma said. Then, with a grin, he added, "Better you than Ryoga." Shampoo giggled, breaking out in a big smile. Ranma held his grin for a moment, then sobered. "But gettin' back to him. I know this is kind of a pain, Shampoo, but I wanted to finally settle things there once and for all. I figured giving him a Falcon curse would actually be handin' him a huge blessing, but it really didn't work out that way after all. So I was hoping you could maybe have some of the Amazons at home mail a cask of Nannichuan out here."

Shampoo regarded him with a hooded stare. "Was you also hoping to use leftover on Genma, instead of having to wait for winter and take trip to Jusenkyo?"

_'Dang, I knew she'd catch it right off the bat.'_ So much for the faint hope Shampoo would agree and set the price for her aid before realizing that she'd be losing that trip with him. "Now that you mention it..."

"Not sure if I can do this at all," the Amazon replied shortly. "Will have to talk to Great-Grandmother, about what new rules is for use Jusenkyo on someone else."

"I'd be really grateful if you could do it, Shampoo..." That was as subtle as he felt capable of being. It still felt better than going the 'blatantly obvious' route; Ranma didn't want to come right out and say, 'I'll throw in a few dates to sweeten the deal.'

"Is good, because something like this not come cheap." Shampoo stated this as firmly as she could, desperately hoping that Ranma wouldn't pick this moment to think back over all the things she'd done for him in the past and realize that if he just stretched his arms around her and gave her a real kiss, she'd be helpless to resist agreeing to just about anything.

"Um. Yeah, I kinda figured that. What exactly would you like from me?" _'Please don't say ten dates... please don't say ten dates...'_

_' I wonder if I could get as many as ten dates... '_ As tempting as that thought was, though, there was another that was very appealing too. _' Should I ask him to train with me instead? It might be a good idea to go ahead and fix that up now, instead of waiting. '_ She had always intended to get him to join her in the lessons Cologne was now teaching her, but the previous plan had been 'wait until I've learned enough, then kick Airen's butt as motivation to get him to accept the offer.' But considering what had happened at Furinkan recently, it might be better to have him start learning these techniques right away.

On the other hand, she already had a good plan for getting him to train with her, and it would be awfully nice to get a bunch of honest-to-goodness dates with him on top of that...

"Shampoo not know," the Amazon eventually answered. "Need time to think about it. And anyway need to talk to Great-Grandmother and see if can even do what Ranma ask."

"Thanks, Shampoo. So... you know, last time we flew together I wasn't in good enough shape to show ya how much I really like this curse. You wanna meet up on top of the Tokyo Tower in about an hour and see just who can fly rings around who?" That ought to help her get over any disappointment over losing out on the China trip.

_' Subtle he isn't. '_ But that was just the way Shampoo liked it. She gave him her best predatory grin, and said, "Is a date."

* * *

"Been a while since we did something like this, Pop." Ranma spared only the barest minimum of attention necessary to form the sentence. The rest of his mind was focused squarely on the familiar figure sharing the Tendo back yard with him, standing roughly ten feet away. Both father and son were keeping their distance at the moment, but that didn't mean either was motionless. They were slowly circling each other like a pair of tomcats (though at least one of them would have violently denied the comparison), each waiting for the other's guard to slip.

"I hope you're not backing down, boy." At that very moment, Genma's maneuvering brought him into the perfect position for the early morning sunlight to gleam menacingly off his glasses. "A student of Anything Goes must be ready to rise to any and all challenges."

"Yeah, I'd say that's words to live by," Ranma retorted with a smirk. "Especially the challenge of kicking his lazy old man's tired butt."

"Bah, I may have taught you all you know, but I haven't taught you all _I_ know, Ranma."

While he would have been able to shrug off any insult, this particular verbal gambit of Genma's caught him off-guard. "You—_what?_" Ranma stumbled ever so slightly, unable to suppress the instinctive gape at Genma's claim to having taught all his son knew.

In an instant Genma abandoned the circling for position, blasting forward to strike in the moment of his son's weakness. With a mental curse, Ranma gave a tremendous leap backward, thankful that his current position relative to the nearest structure gave him plenty of space and time to recover in midair. Genma was following an instant later, but age and guile and experience couldn't match the sheer physical advantage Ranma's youth and—let's face it—superior physique allowed. Genma's own leap would have been equally impressive to almost any spectator, but it was just enough slower than Ranma's that the younger Saotome had enough time to prepare himself, land on the top of the Tendo boundary wall, and bounce away again toward the roof.

By contrast, Genma stopped on the wall, turning to face his son but not following. "You know, the whole point of this exercise is to brush up on skills you don't use that often," he rebuked.

"So what? You're saying you _wanted_ me to smack these into your head as I passed over ya?" Ranma shot back, gesturing with the nunchaku he held in either hand. His father was similarly armed. Both kept their weapons spinning at a constant, steady hum, necessitating them to speak their verbal banter a little louder than normal. "Sure thing, Pop!" He had the advantage of the high ground now, and had no intention of letting the fight continue as it had begun. It was annoying enough to be the first to be forced into retreat. Time to settle the score. With a fierce kiai, Ranma pushed away from the roof, zooming toward his father with the power and ferocity of his cursed form diving toward its next meal.

"Next time don't announce it like that!" Genma shouted, declining to be reduced to a grease smear. Slower than his son he might be, but Ranma's pause and taunt had given him enough time to prepare. Even as Ranma left the roof and the first word left Genma's mouth his legs were tensing for his own jump, and a split second later the older Saotome was airborne in a high forward flip.

Ranma adjusted his own plan on the fly, paying no heed to what Genma was saying, realizing that his father's maneuver would bring the old man just high enough above him that Genma could bounce a nunchaku off his son's back. It took every ounce of skill he had, but he twisted himself through an incredibly fast one-eighty degree turn, ending with his back facing toward the ground and both his weapons coming up to block Genma's descending attack. The older Saotome had only struck with one of his own nunchaku, and the one in his left hand at that. The right was held off to the side in what wasn't even a decent guarding position. Ranma didn't exactly have the time to verbalize the complete thought, 'If he thinks he's gonna hold back on me like that and not get pounded to a pulp he's got another think coming,' but that was more or less the concept that flashed across his mind.

In the next instant, as Genma somehow managed to first tangle both Ranma's nunchaku with his left, then spin the one in his right hand so fiercely as to alter both Saotomes' midair flight, Ranma was forced to abandon it. Instead of less than a second's remaining air time until impact with the boundary wall, the two were now describing a long, high, lazy arc toward the Tendo rooftop. The kick that the younger Saotome was already bending around to deliver missed entirely, due to the unexpected shift. Genma himself managed to land a blow squarely, bouncing his right nunchaku off his son's head. The blow lacked any significant force, due to the awkwardness of shifting his focus so quickly, but both Saotomes knew well that it was the thought that counted.

Ranma bit off a curse, and kicked into a higher gear than he usually used when sparring with his father. Releasing one nunchaku entirely, and trusting in the tangled state of the weapons combined with his remaining grip to avoid complete disarmament, he struck toward Genma's left hand with Amaguriken speed. Excessive force was neither needed nor desired; the unexpected high-speed pokes to his knuckles had Genma's hand spasming open and releasing his hold on the three tangled pairs of chained sticks.

Pulling back hard with both hands bought Ranma enough rotational velocity to transform his flight from 'parallel with Genma's' to 'angled toward the ground'. The move forcefully untangled the nunchaku, sending the two not currently clenched in someone's grip flying in different directions. Landing only for an instant, he bounced back into the air, catching the nearest weapon, noting with some disgust that the other was flying toward a spot only four feet away from his father's landing zone. The old man wouldn't have had to exert himself to catch it even if he'd been in panda form, for cryin' out loud!

Ranma's latest flight touched down on top of the dojo. "Not bad so far, Pop," he said with his best taunting smirk. "When do you want me stop holding back so much?"

"Bah, I'm the one going easy on you for your sake," Genma shot back. "Now get off there, I don't want you disturbing Akane."

The smirk disappeared, replaced by a grimace. Ranma would just as soon not have been reminded that the tomboy was in there right now, and had been since before his father woke him up this morning. "Geez, you think you didn't already make that clear?" he asked, suppressing the impulse to charge in for another attack. He could wait a few seconds in the interest of ignoring Genma's command. "What's this big, important, mysterious training you got going on with Akane, that I can't help out with or even watch?" The smirk was back now. "It ain't like she's ever gonna manage something like this!" And now he leapt, jumping not toward Genma but rather directly into the empty air above the koi pond. A second later, however, he had twisted around to face his father, his body angled like a torpedo, his arms bent slightly down and the nunchaku spinning for all they were worth. It was considerably harder than he'd expected it to be, but Ranma managed to alter his flight path as radically as his father had just a handful of moments ago, curving around to zoom straight toward Genma.

The elder Saotome gave three quick skips backward, traversing from one end of the roof to the other. "That's not what I'm teaching her, Ranma, but you of all people ought to respect someone trying to learn new skills!"

"Yeah, whatever," Ranma said as he landed at the spot his father had abandoned, unable to come up with a snappy comeback for a remark he recognized as basically true. It might have more of an impact if Akane had ever once tried to learn any of the advanced skills she'd watched him or Ryoga training in, though. Not bothering to say that, he drove forward on the attack again, this time staying grounded on the roof. Genma charged forward to meet him "All I'm saying," he jinked his head to one side as Genma's attack forced his own left weapon's course dangerously close, "is that Akane ain't never," he forced a tiny opening in Genma's guard, and bounced a glancing blow off his father's ribs, "trained anything like seriously." A furious exchange between father and son took all the concentration he could spare for the next several moments, leaving nothing for speech.

Once the storm of spinning sticks quieted a bit, both Saotomes jumped back and away to recuperate. Genma had received more hits, but none of them had been at full power and the elder Saotome's natural padding absorbed much of the impact. By contrast Ranma had taken only one blow directly, but it had landed right on his crazy bone and he was more than happy to get some time to recover.

"Well, maybe she wants to change that," Genma pronounced. "I know you don't think much of your fiancée's skills, boy, but at least you ought to be able to respect and help her once she gets serious about improving them."

"That'd cut a lot more ice if she really was trying to improve for her own sake," Ranma snapped back. "Instead of just wanting to take Shampoo down."

"That's funny," Genma challenged. "It seems to me that each major technique you've learned here, you learned because you needed to beat someone. Did that somehow slip your mind, boy?"

Ranma gave his father a flat stare. "What exactly is your point? Those are the only times I've had the opportunity. Unless you're sayin' I shoulda gone to the old freak and asked him really, really nicely if he'd maybe teach me one of those things he's unloaded every so often. You really want me to drop a Happo Fire Bomb on your head during one of these matches, Pop?"

Genma shuddered at the thought, not only of that but at what the Master would probably have asked of his son before teaching any really powerful secrets. He'd never have been able to see Nodoka again, that was for sure... either Ranma would be disqualified forever from passing her standard of manliness, or he'd have learned something that would put him a little too far over the finish line. Even Nodoka would consider it too much of a good thing if her son ended up seducing the female half of Furinkan.

"And what about it anyway?" Ranma continued. "Special techniques are great and all, but for where I am in the Art right now they ain't the most important thing. The basics are still where I need to make sure I'm always growing. Speed, accuracy, balance, strength, control, stamina, endurance..." he paused for a moment, zoning out while picturing himself flattened under an Amazon and her bicycle. Genma decided not to blast forward and take advantage of the opening, since this discussion was ultimately more important than the sparring itself. It was a very close thing, though.

"And I've been working on all those things all this time," his son continued. "You think Akane can say the same thing? Not a chance in the world, old man. The best you could say for her is she's got a lot of strength, and she's kept on building it a little higher." Kind of sad that Shampoo was still much stronger by his estimation, but that was what being born in a culture that had bred for stuff like that for three thousand years would do for you. Not exactly fair, but neither was the world in general.

"Bah. That was then and this is now," Genma grumbled. "Though I will say that it's good to see you so focused on what Akane needs for optimal improvement. When the two of you are married, it will be you helping her to grow as best she needs to."

"Give me a break," Ranma snapped. "Or better yet, just give me a straight answer." His eyes narrowed dangerously. "You and I both know why she's doing this. She wants to be better than Shampoo, wants to be able to beat the girl—the _Amazon_ who'd just won her village championship tournament on the day we met her. And you and I also both know that it would take years of serious work before Akane could even get to where Shampoo is now, and Shampoo herself ain't exactly gonna stop trainin' and growin' during that time. Kinda hard to do that when you're living under the rooftop of the leader of the entire tribe, you know? So it ain't like Akane's gonna get an advantage cause of her getting better and Shampoo slacking off. You know this just as well as I do. So tell me, Pop... have you spelled this out for her?" Realizing that might be a bit much to ask, especially considering that his father hadn't suffered any severe beat-downs lately, he amended, "Or at least, have ya kept quiet on any stupid promises? All I really want to hear from you is that ya haven't told Akane she'll be able to beat Shampoo with whatever mysterious training this is you've got her doing."

"Those are fair enough questions," Genma allowed. Unfortunately, there was no way he was ready to answer them truthfully, not now, not to Ranma at least. "The fact of the matter is, son—AN OPENING!" And with that, the elder Saotome drove forward, initiating a renewal of hostilities with all the ferocity and power he could muster.

Several chaotic minutes later, an aching, battered, panting, bruised Ranma stood in the middle of the back yard, with one foot poised triumphantly atop his father's flattened form. Several dozen shingles were missing from the roof, a fact which would certainly not reduce Nabiki's recent animosity, but Ranma was cheerfully oblivious to both these truths. "Yeah, that's what you get, Pop. Now, getting back to our discussion...?"

It was a seriously painful method of gaining victory, Genma conceded in the privacy of his own thoughts, but Anything Goes stressed that if that was the only kind you could get, you took it and were thankful for it. His voice was more of a groan than speech, his body was as limp as a filleted slab of swordfish, and his face was flat against the ground with his eyes closed. As such, it was impossible for Ranma to pick up on any sign of dishonesty as he answered, "Of course I haven't told her she'll be able to defeat Shampoo. She might or might not think it, but I haven't ever told her anything that would let her believe that. I'm just trying to help her improve her skills. And please don't butt in yet, boy, you know how it makes her get all edgy and defensive when she has to face how much better you are."

"Yeah, whatever," Ranma answered. Truth be told, it didn't feel all that great to get excluded from these mysterious meetings Genma was having with Akane in the dojo, but today's sparring session had worked wonders for letting out the worst of that irritation. The unusual nature of today's training had been the best challenge his father had provided in months, and he'd even learned something new. Despite the aches and bruises in his body, his spirit was feeling more than generous enough to agree. "I'll let you walk her through whatever baby steps you've got her on. But Pop..." Here he bent down, grasped his father's shoulder, and lifted the older man up enough to look him in the eye. He wasn't quite generous enough not to get one last bit of smack-talking in, as well as a reminder of just who had won today's little match. "If I see ya digging a pit and gettin' Kasumi to round up a bunch of strays, I'm gonna make you think this morning was a nice relaxin' massage."

"I'd like to think I learned my lesson about that particular technique," Genma protested. "At least, after the sixth time going back only made things worse for you."

Ranma's eyes gleamed, and his lips curved into an involuntary snarl. "Don't remind me," he growled, rather unfairly considering just who had brought the topic up. "If you weren't already flattened like a smashed slug, I'd give you a few good licks right now!"

"Ranma! Mr. Saotome! Breakfast!" Kasumi called from the porch.

There was a blur, a whoosh, and a wind which whipped the eldest Tendo daughter's hair in a cascade of brown. Once it was no longer blocking her vision, she turned and saw both Saotomes perched eagerly at the table. "Mmm, smells great, Kasumi," Genma pronounced, salivating with anticipation.

* * *

Akane slid the door shut behind her and tossed her bookbag onto her bed without a second thought. She had homework to do, but it would wait. She headed to her closet, and proceeded to exchange her schoolday clothing for a crisp, freshly-laundered gi. She tied the belt around her waist, pulling the knot as tight as her facial expression.

Today was Tuesday, the sixth day of her training under Genma. It hadn't taken long for him to establish her routine; each morning, she would train for two hours, partly supervised by Genma, partly on her own when he went to spar with Ranma. The morning session meant she couldn't get in weekday jogging any longer, but when she'd pointed that out to Genma he had stated flatly that for where she was now, that kind of exercise was worse than nothing at all. Akane didn't know how that was supposed to work, but since she was the one asking for favors here, she hadn't been willing to push too hard.

The morning session was the lighter portion of her workload. Her sensei expected her to come straight home after school and proceed directly to the dojo, where she would spend the next four hours under his full-time supervision.

It was hard.

It was harder by far than any training she'd done in her life.

And she'd be damned if she went to this much trouble without getting what she wanted. What Genma had promised he would give her.

"One more chance," Akane muttered grimly as she headed down the stairs. "He was the one who trained Ranma, after all." She passed through the back door and headed toward the dojo. "He knows what he's doing a lot better than I do." But while Akane knew that was true, it wasn't necessarily true in a good way.

She opened the dojo door and entered the building. As expected, Genma was already there waiting for her, positioned in his best 'wise old sensei' stance. Also as expected, there was a large crate resting against the wall, a short distance away from the Saotome master. "Hello, Akane," he said.

"Hello, Mr. Saotome," she returned. In their very first session she had offered the full formality due to a sensei. Genma had snorted louder and more obnoxiously than she could even remember from his son, and replied in no uncertain terms that they weren't going to be wasting their time with those kinds of frills and obsolete old traditions. She was Akane and he was Mr. Saotome—unless, he'd added, she wanted to call him Father-in-law.

Since it was their first session, she had still been riding the emotional high from imagining herself overtaking Shampoo and finally giving the Amazon what she deserved. As a result, Akane had only replied with a thin-lipped, vaguely tolerant smile.

Neither said anything more for the moment, as Akane began her warm-up stretches. Genma watched, and Akane kept one eye on him in turn. Two days ago, the old panda had proved he wasn't above launching an attack even in this preliminary period. This time, however, Genma just waited patiently for her to conclude.

"All right, I'm ready," she pronounced when she was confident that she'd put in enough preparation.

"Very well. Come over here." Genma closed the distance to the crate, with Akane following right behind him. He opened the lid to reveal the largest quantity of marbles Akane had seen in her entire life. "This afternoon's exercise will be—"

"Stop. Right. There." Akane gritted the words out with some difficulty, as most of her focus was taken up in keeping her temper. Genma complied, shifting his posture away from the crate to face her directly with a mild, inquisitive look on his face. It didn't quite reach his eyes, but Akane was in no mood to take note of the gleam that the Saotome master couldn't quite suppress.

"Right now, it's marbles," she said, the words starting slowly but picking up steam. "This morning you made me practice ten different katas with the ceiling rigged to randomly shoot me with Super Soakers. Yesterday afternoon you had me blindfolded and my hands tied behind my back while I tried to stop you smacking me with pillows. Yesterday _morning_ it was golf balls dropping out of the ceiling and I had to catch them and throw them at a training dummy with my hands covered in grease! The afternoon before THAT, you—"

"Is this going somewhere?" Genma asked mildly. "If you want a few more minutes before the training starts," he took his first casual step backward as Akane began walking toward him, her eye twitching and her fingers clenching and unclenching, "just go back to stretching."

"Every day, no, every stupid time we meet for you to train me it's something different!" Akane yelled. "Twelve sessions now, and each one was something totally different! I kept quiet at first, because after I thought about each one I could see something it could teach me. But I haven't learned them yet! I haven't mastered _any_ of these things yet, and you just keep jumping on to the next one! You're supposed to be helping me learn to do better, not just keep dreaming that I'm okay the way I am! Are you even going to try teaching me, or do you just want to humor me until I give up and quit bothering you?"

She paused for a moment, struggling for breath and composure, then said, "So help me, if you don't start taking this seriously, taking _me_ seriously, I'll... I'll..." She knew there was one place she could hit him where it hurt, and though it wouldn't feel very good to her either, Akane Tendo was more than ready to make some sacrifices in the name of what she'd committed to. "I'll tell Kasumi not to cook you _anything_ anymore. I'll be the one fixing all your meals, and for you I won't even try to make them good ones."

Genma just snorted, unphased by the threat. "Only six days and you already know what I need to do to train you better than I do myself. Congratulations, Akane," he said, sarcasm dripping off the words. "If Ranma had learned that quickly, by now I'd have him taking on the Master and the Amazon Matriarch at the same time and winning." Akane's fists clenched tighter, and an even more murderous expression settled on her face. "Or maybe you just need an explanation? Better yet, how about a demonstration. Pick out one of those marbles to throw at me, if you would be so kind."

The box's size and position against the wall made it just a little too difficult to simply hurl all its contents at him at once. Akane did as requested, jamming her hand into the mass of marbles and rummaging around before pulling out a large, steel shooter. "Okay. Are you ready now, oh wise and gracious teacher?" she growled, trying and nearly succeeding to match Genma's level of sarcasm.

"One moment." Saying this, Genma took one step to the side and turned so that he was facing her straight on. He then took one slow step backward, leaving a gap of about three feet between the two of them. From some of the things they had done in their previous sessions, Akane was bitterly aware that he undoubtedly knew some trick or technique for dodging even with such a slight distance between them. So far it was looking like the same pattern she'd seen before: she would throw and he would dodge or otherwise negate the attack, she would be impressed at his performance or at least acknowledge that she couldn't manage it, he would have her spend the rest of their time trying to match his feat, she would make some progress by the end of the session but by no means would she have learned everything she could, and next time he would jump to something else.

_'Well, not this time,' _she thought bitterly, feeling the comfortably solid weight of the second, hidden shooter she had palmed while retrieving the obvious first one. _'If he can't try something new, I will.'_

"All right, Akane. Try to hit me with the marble."

Akane swung her hand back then brought it sharply forward, releasing the marble to fly straight and true to Genma's forehead. She had to sacrifice most of the power she could have put into the throw, due to the second marble still hiding in her hand. She would hit him with that one at full force while he was focused on whatever he was planning to do about the first one.

She hadn't expected him to stand there and take the hit directly. She _certainly_ hadn't expected the marble to strike and sink completely beneath his skin.

She barely had time to gasp, drop the other marble, and begin to stumble feebly forward before the image of Genma vanished. The marble dropped to the ground with a **thunk **of steel on wood, echoing a second after the impact from the one she hadn't thrown. Genma himself was revealed as his decoy disappeared; the elder Saotome was standing four feet behind his previous apparent position. "M... Mr. Saotome... how?" Akane managed.

"You've seen this before, Akane. Not the same application," Genma admitted, "but the same principle. Think about it."

"The same thing? Seen it before?" Akane blinked several times, all other emotions now buried under a slew of befuddlement. "I don't remember ever seeing anything like that from Grandmaster Happosai."

A rather louder **thunk** resounded through the dojo now, as Genma's face collided with the floor. "Not him, me!" he bellowed as he picked himself up. "And DON'T SAY HIS NAME!"

"You?" Akane said dubiously. A second later, her mind cleared enough to realize that doubt wasn't really an appropriate response here, since they were talking about something Genma had just clearly demonstrated he was capable of doing. And there was one time she could think of that the old panda had pulled off something even more impressive than this... and one time when he almost had... "Is this something to do with that trick to make a big illusion of yourself?" she asked.

"Illusion my hairy panda butt," Genma snapped, still disgruntled at her response. "Just because it's not a flesh and blood body doesn't make it any less real. Your aura is as important a part of you as your skin is... at least, that's true for a _real_ martial artist."

"And you're going to teach me how to use that?" Akane asked, excitement at the sheer possibilities overriding the response she might otherwise have made to his last little comment.

"Yes, I am," Genma affirmed. "Now do you see the point of all the exercises I've had you doing?"

"No. I haven't got a clue," she admitted.

He gave a satisfied smile. "I'm glad to hear you admit it, Akane. Stubborn pride can be a terrible hindrance in your quest for the Art." Of course, if she'd had Ranma's sheer talent then stubborn pride could become an asset. During his and Ranma's long years on the road, there had been more times than Genma could remember when Ranma had refused to admit difficulty or ask for help with a task Genma had set him. Usually this led to the boy pushing forward with everything he had and learning whatever lesson was being taught solely on his own resources. Genma believed this was one of the key factors in his son's superb ability to solve problems, at least within the realm of the Art, not to mention the levels of confidence it took to fire off a Moko Takabisha.

On the other hand, it had been a long, long time since Ranma had looked at him with the expression Akane was wearing now.

Hopefully that wouldn't be true much longer.

"The reason each exercise is different is because you're not trying to learn any physical lessons from them," the Saotome master explained in his best 'wise old sensei' voice. "You're performing unfamiliar tasks, striving to overcome your limits, fighting your body's awkwardness and the frustration that would choke your mind. The only constants are struggle and change. _That,_ Akane, is Anything Goes in its heart and soul!"

Akane's eyes were wide now. It might have taken longer to get here than she would have liked, and the road might have been rockier, but it felt very good to be hearing this. To be treated like this. To receive the respect she'd wanted for so long, and no-one had given her. "You haven't even taught Ranma these lessons, have you?" She couldn't believe that show-off could have something like this in his bag of tricks without ever using it.

"No, I haven't," Genma replied. "And that's part of the reason I'm not letting him watch you train. I want him to stay ignorant of what I'm working on with you until you've reached a decent level of mastery in the technique. Once you've done that, once you can show it to him and impress him as much as he needs to be impressed, I'll let him in on the training as well. You can help him get up to speed while I oversee the both of you." It was a good plan, Genma thought. It would mean more time that Ranma was spending with his real fiancée, growing to respect her more even as she became better able to understand him.

It would also show a certain boy that his father was more than what he seemed to think, wasn't just a washed-up old panda with nothing real left to teach. Genma still remembered the cold hurt and fear he'd felt so long ago, that day in the Tendo backyard when his son-turned-daughter had been struggling to learn the Amaguriken, struggling even to maintain her fighting spirit, and had looked to him for help. Genma had winged it as best he could, focusing his chi to boost his speed. He'd failed, completely and utterly, and riding hard on the heels of his failure had come the Beast from China, Matriarch Cologne herself, dropping in to effortlessly demonstrate the move to everyone. The Tendos had ooh'd and ahh'd. Ranma-chan had found new reserves of determination. And Genma-panda had turned away and closed his eyes, his slumping posture leaving everything but his upper head hidden in the waters of the pond.

The very next day he'd begun working on exercises similar to the ones he was now giving Akane—similar in their goal, at least.

"But I need to warn you, Akane. Don't expect a quick and easy road to mastery," Genma cautioned. "I suppose you've already seen enough not to think it would be easy, but it's also true that there's no quick way to do this. It will take you a long time. It will take Ranma a long time." It would take him a very long time to get back the whole of what he'd once had while training under Happosai, what he hadn't bothered to maintain during his years on the road with Ranma. He hadn't realized until far too late that letting this particular set of abilities atrophy would be such a mistake. Getting his son established in the Art had been Genma's greatest priority by far during that time, and it had seemed like a perfectly reasonable exchange to make, to trade his own power for the time, energy, and focus he needed to mold Ranma into someone who would one day surpass him.

And now his son had, and Genma wasn't sure how to handle it. There was pride, certainly, but there were other, far less pleasant feelings involved when he tried to help his boy in a trial, only to have Ranma barely acknowledge his attempts and proceed to solve the problem on his own . Just as bad or worse were the times when someone else stepped in and put his own attempts to shame. He and Ranma had had plenty of troubles on the road, but none of those kinds of circumstances. Where had all the days and years gone?

"How long?" Akane asked, breaking through his fugue. Judging by the look on her face, the first bloom of elation at what she was going to learn had now passed. "How long until I've learned enough to defeat Shampoo?"

Genma gave her a long, cold stare. "That depends on you." It also depended on her answer to his next question. "Are you planning to just stop once you manage to accomplish that goal?"

"No, I'm not that stupid," Akane snapped back. "It's not like she won't go running to her great-grandmother and ask for a technique of her own. And even if she didn't I'm tired of depending on Ranma to rescue me. You can count on it, Mr. Saotome—I'll keep on training and learning too."

"Good. Because this particular path is one you should never stop walking down."

"I just said I understood that," Akane pointed out.

"No, that's not what I mean. I'm not talking about martial arts in general," he clarified. "I mean the things we're working on now. These exercises I'm giving you are designed for one specific goal, which is to build your chi reserves as quickly and powerfully as possible."

"My reserves...?" she echoed, thinking back to what she'd seen that one night at the carnival when demons had escaped from scribble drawings. Happosai, Genma, and even her father had formed huge chi-projections to fight them off. And then she thought back further, to a day many months before that one, when Genma had tried to use that same technique to face down Happosai. He had only been able to hold it for a few seconds then, as tired and weary as he was. "I guess it would take a lot to make a huge copy of yourself like that," she mused.

"Don't expect to be pulling _that_ one off before your next birthday has come and gone," Genma stated flatly. There was no way he could put her through the same level of training the Master had used on him. Genma estimated that it would take at least twice as long for Akane to build up that level of power as it originally had for Soun and himself, and that wasn't even considering the time it would take for her to learn how to use the techniques. "At least not if you want it to be solid enough to do anything."

"So what else can I do with this technique?"

"The heart of what I'll be teaching you is to project and control your aura. It becomes stronger in two ways: as you learn to control it better, and as your reserves grow wider and deeper. As for what you can do with it..." Genma gave his best 'wise old sensei' shrug. "You were there when the Master and the old woman went at it with dueling battle auras. That's one application you've seen for yourself—projecting energy that hits harder than a chi blast like Ranma's or Ryoga's and is far more controllable. And of course," he gave a smirk that could have come straight from Ranma, except that it didn't make any portion of Akane's heart beat faster, "you can project a separate image of yourself to take a hit for you, and even hide behind it if it's directly between you and your opponent. It took me a long time to work out how, but I developed that trick from seeing the Splitting Cat Hairs.

"You can also keep the energy insubstantial, rather than making it solid or semisolid. There are at least as many possible uses for that approach, and maybe more." Genma frowned thoughtfully. "I think the Master's Now You See Me, Now You Don't is an aura trick of some kind. To be able to actually turn invisible in the middle of a fight... even if you can't attack like that, it would be an amazing advantage. I still haven't worked that one out, but maybe one day Ranma will. Or perhaps you'll beat him to it, Akane." He smiled jovially, masking his certainty that the only way that would happen was if no-one ever gave Ranma the idea to try.

"So what _can_ the energy do by itself? That you know for sure and can teach me, I mean?"

"Well, the more images you project the easier it is to confuse whoever you're fighting. If you don't make them solid enough to hit, they don't take as much power and you can pull it off easier." That wasn't what Cologne had done; Genma had watched closely enough to be sure that it hadn't always been the same copy of the old woman bonking his son over the head. "But you don't even have to make it something as organized as that. You can let your aura flood out from you and fill the area around you. When you're fighting in a convenient enclosed space, like this dojo, it's easier to build up the concentration high enough to really throw your opponent off. It will hinder their own chi techniques, and even make them dizzy and disoriented if you can pump out enough power and they don't know how to cope."

"Because... it's like they're trying to swim right through my spirit? But wouldn't that affect me too?"

"Not at any level I can bring you to," Genma admitted. "I suppose it might be possible to have that much control, to keep that much awareness and connection to every bit of your aura while you use it to fill the room. But for me, the only way I can pull off that kind of link is when I'm forming a bigger version of myself with my real body at the center. Like that time at the carnival."

"Or the time you and Dad tried to learn to defeat Grandfather Happ—oh, all right, _the Master_ with ninja tricks," Akane sniped back playfully. "Ranma and I were pretty impressed for that one second. You'll teach me to do a better job than that, right?"

"That's exactly what I'm doing," he replied in all sobriety. "Akane, I already said what we have to focus on now is building up your reserves. That's something you can't ever afford to stop doing once you get to a certain level. If you don't at least maintain them, if you allow them to waste away... like I did... it's much harder to get them back. _That_ is why I did so poorly that one time, and it's why I was able to make a better job of it the next time I had to use the technique. It's taken me the better part of a year to get my power levels back to where they were after only three months."

She blinked. "Huh? After a year you got them to where they were after three months? That doesn't make sense."

"I meant after three months of this training when the Master first put me and Soun through it." It was one of the few times Happosai had buckled down and really acted like a sensei, directly teaching his students and guiding them every step of the way toward understanding and mastery.

"So... what about Dad?" Akane asked, her brow wrinkling thoughtfully. "Has he been rebuilding his training like that too? He did just as well as you did that night at the carnival."

Genma snorted. "No, he didn't. He had to stay in bed and rest for the next four days."

"So did you!"

"Actually, no. I just grabbed the chance to take a break." Plus, he'd seen the gleam in Happosai's eye after the dust had settled that night. If he and Soun hadn't acted that pathetic, chances were excellent that the Master would have dragged them off on a training trip. It was never a good idea to show too much potential around Happosai—witness the things he did to Ranma.

Akane rolled her eyes. "Whatever. But still, how could he have done that well without the kind of practice you've been doing? He may have been wiped out afterward, but he kept up with you and Grandfather H—," she cut herself off, sighing at Genma's frantic expression and gestures of negation. "With both of you."

"That's because his Demon Head technique is based on these same aura principles." Genma smiled. "Soun might not have kept himself at the level he and I reached back in our youth, but he'd never let himself get too out of shape to use that. And with the extra practice he's gotten since we came here..."

"You mean that's also part of this? I can learn to do that one too?" Akane gasped, her cheeks flushing and her eyes sparkling. _'I guess I know what I'll use for my second win against Shampoo.'_

"Perhaps," Genma cautioned. "But I'm going to have to ask you not to use it on Ranma."

"Okay," Akane said cheerfully. Genma breathed a sigh of relief, failing to realize that by that she had meant, 'Okay, you can ask me.'

* * *

It was the final full schoolday of the week and the single busiest time for the Furinkan courtyard, the hour when it saw its greatest concentration of students. In the morning boys and girls alike would straggle in at different times, some coming quite early, others waiting until the last minute, and the rest covering the spectrum between. But in the afternoon, almost everybody left at the same time. It was therefore slightly unusual that Akane was able to immediately catch sight of Ranma as she passed through the final door of Furinkan, a random gap in the crowd opening at just the right time to show him waiting for her in his usual spot. He was standing on the edge of the courtyard, right next to the gate itself.

_'At least, it's his usual spot when he's there at all,'_ Akane thought with a mixture of concern and irritation. In the month since Shampoo had come back from China and turned far too many things upside down, there had been several times when Ranma hadn't waited for her, had left her behind for reasons of his own. She might agree somewhat with some of the things he'd done in those times—like his meeting with Shampoo ten days ago to arrange for her to undo her dirty trick against Ryoga—but it still rankled to find him not waiting there for her no matter what the reason.

Of course, thanks to Tatewaki Kuno, there were now more reasons for him not to be there to meet her than just Ranma wanting to gallivant off on his own. Those other reasons were potentially even worse, making Akane's relief all the sharper at seeing her fiancé waiting for her today.

"Looks like Ranma made it through okay." This was Sayuri, partly teasing, partly congratulating her friend.

"Mm-hm." Yuka nodded. "Tomorrow's just a half-day of classes, and then there's no school at all. You and he won't have to worry about any of this then."

Akane snorted. "For a day, anyway. Then Monday rolls around, and the same old thing starts all over again." Then, thinking ahead to the training she'd be doing with Genma in less than an hour, Akane forcibly reminded herself that it wasn't true, things didn't always stay the same forever. She didn't have to put up with tired old worn-out circumstances that should've gone away of their own accord long ago. Things were frustrating and troublesome right now, both at Furinkan and outside of it, but she wasn't going to stand it forever.

Bidding a quick goodbye to her friends, Akane hurried through the courtyard over to the pigtailed boy. "So nothing happened during your last class of the day, Ranma?"

At another time Ranma might have been annoyed at the question, insulted at the implication that he needed Akane's help to meet the daily challenges of life. However, given what actually HAD happened in the interval between Akane leaving for her club and the final class of the day starting... "Eh, nothing much," he said as he left his pose against the wall and turned to head through the gate, making certain to have his back to Akane as he spoke a carefully-edited version of the truth. "Some of the members of the falconry club stopped by again, to beg me about usin' my cursed form to help them stomp all their competition."

"Oh, honestly," Akane muttered. "Why can't those guys just give it up and decide to play fair? Just tell them next time to chip in all their allowances and send one of _them_ to Jusenkyo, if they want an intelligent falcon so much!"

Ranma blinked. "Hey... that's actually a pretty good idea! Thanks, Akane!" Maybe it would even work. It would sure be better than having the four prettiest girls in the club trying to get his help by making him offers more blatant than Kodachi ever had. _'Geez, at least the Black Petunia wants me for the long haul, and she's got the excuse of being a Kuno. I'd've rather had her­ crash the party this afternoon instead of what really happened.'_ It was the first time he'd felt true, deep regret that Akane had joined the flower arrangement club. Had she still been in the classroom with him, those other girls would have kept their distance.

Of course, the same was true for Ukyo. His oldest friend had been absent from class today, and Ranma had already decided to pay her a visit and see how she was feeling, as soon as Akane disappeared into the dojo for her afternoon training. _'Hope Ucchan's not too sick. Heck, I could tell her most of what happened today, just editing out the worst stuff, and let her take care of warning off those chicks from the falconry club.'_ He knew better than to give any of those details to Akane, but Ucchan was a lot better at not blaming him for stuff that wasn't his fault. As long as he edited out the worst of it, his oldest friend ought to save all her righteous anger for the appropriate target and give him nothing but free okonomiyaki and sympathy.

However, as it turned out, he wasn't going to have to wait that long before seeing her. As Ranma and Akane passed through the gate of Furinkan, they caught sight of a rather odd spectacle. Despite the cloudless state of the sky above, there was a figure a little ways down the sidewalk heading toward the school while garbed in the most complete set of rain gear Ranma had ever seen. Galoshes, rubber gloves, a hooded raincoat that reached the person's ankles (and which bulged oddly to the back, as if hiding a large, long, flat object), a snorkel mask covering the face, and to top it all off an umbrella twice the diameter of Ryoga's. It was that fact, plus the other's slim build, that made Ranma dismiss the possibility that this really was the Lost Boy. True, he'd never seen Ryoga go to quite this extreme to avoid a dousing, but it didn't seem too out of character.

It wasn't Ryoga, but someone even more familiar. "Ranchan, thank goodness it's you!" The voice was distorted a bit by the various rubber layers, but it was clearly recognizable as Ukyo's. The distress with which she'd spoken was equally obvious.

"Ucchan?" he queried. "What the heck? Why're you dressed like that?"

"Are you all right, Ukyo?" Akane asked, following hard on his heels. She hoped so. Bizarre behavior by any of their close acquaintances was never a good sign.

"I... I don't know... Ranma honey, I need you to tell me everything you know about Jusenkyo curses."

Ranma blinked. "Huh? Jusenkyo...?" An awful, nameless suspicion beginning to gnaw at the back of his mind, he said, "Why are you askin'? The way you're dressed... it's almost like you're worried—"

"Why do you think?" Ukyo snapped, interrupting him. "You think I'm just dolled up like this for my health?" Then, with a half-hysterical laugh, the chef qualified, "Wait, that actually does describe it pretty well, I guess. Ever since I was walking to school this morning, and that," here followed a long string of words that had Ranma blanching, while Akane winced and took a few steps backward, "_Amazon_ dropped a bucket full of water on me. Except normal water wouldn't have shrunk me down and left me swallowed up inside my own uniform."

"Shampoo did... she did...?" This was Akane. Ranma couldn't quite bring himself to the point of speech yet.

"Oh, yeah." Ukyo laughed bitterly. "One minute I'm walking toward class, carefree as ever. The next I'm getting my unexpected shower, then I'm tangled up in the dark, no clue what happened and fighting tooth and claw to get out. Then the world's lifting up and tumbling over—that would be Shampoo picking up the clothes and fishing me out of them—and then she's got me by the scruff of the neck, holding me up to stare her in the eyes, just far enough away that I can't reach out and scratch her, telling me 'Now you know what it feel like.' Not that I did, not that I had even begun to understand yet." Ukyo stopped, took a few deep, ragged breaths, then continued, "The world blurred and started jumping around again then, which was her running from where she'd ambushed me over to that big fancy outdoor-bath place on Kushimoto Street. She pitched me and my clothes in there and high-tailed it away." Or at least Ukyo's pride hoped Shampoo had beat a hurried retreat, rather than sauntering casually away. It had been at least an hour before her shock had abated enough to even begin to think about anything other than the immediate present.

"She gave you a Jusenkyo curse?" Akane whispered, horrified. "I, I thought she'd used up the last of the Falcon water... Ranma! You told me she'd used up the last of the Falcon water, you jerk!"

Any attempt Ranma might have made at a reply was cut off by an even more bitter peal of laughter from Ukyo. "Falcon? Yeah, right. Guess again, Sugar. Which curse do you think she'd give me, which one would be the absolute worst for me and Ranma honey? Which curse did _she_ originally have?" the chef clarified.

_'She gave Ucchan a cat curse...'_ Curiously enough, the only thing Ranma felt was despair. He suspected the anger would follow soon enough, but for now the impact of this new development had robbed him of all the strength he would need to feel such an emotion. _'No matter what I do or how hard I try, worse and worse junk just keeps on happening... How could I have let this happen? But how could I have avoided it?'_

He didn't know the answer to either question. All he could think, all he could speak, was a near-whispered "Ucchan... I'm sorry... I'm so sorry..."

"Never mind the apologies, Ranchan, it's damn well not your fault! Just tell me, what is it about Jusenkyo curses I'm missing here? Once I finished freaking out from seeing my reflection and changed back in a hot-water pool, I tried every single cold-water one there and didn't trigger the curse again. Does chlorine block it or something?"

This latest communication hit him with at least as much of an impact as her previous revelation of Shampoo's actions. However, instead of adding to his despair or sparking it into anger, this one felt like it smashed a hole in the pit of his gut and let all that horror and sorrow start draining out. "You... couldn't... change... back...?" he whispered, first in blankness, then in the barest beginning of hope.

For someone who'd been raised since birth to prefer actions over words, Ranma's next move was entirely sensible. Ukyo blinked as her fiancé dashed away, crossing the street into the yard of a nearby house. Then she let out a shriek of surprise as he reappeared just as quickly, blurring across the street with a hose in one hand, and with the other proceeded to whisk her right out of the rain gear before spraying her from head to toe.

This action had several immediate results. For one, it revealed Ukyo had been wearing her Furinkan uniform under the rain gear. It was slightly the worse for wear, due to her initial panicky clawing attempts to escape. The pants were still in perfect condition, but the top was frayed in a couple of fortunately-not-too-indiscreet places. And her usual chest binding was gone entirely, consigned to a garbage bin after she discovered how severely she'd torn it during her struggle with the enveloping fabric.

The actual dousing had no mystical effect of any kind on the chef. Certainly she didn't shrink down into a cute little bundle of fur and claws and horror (at least, from Ranma's perspective), leaving him to breathe a huge sigh of relief and not even notice that he was looking straight at a girl in a soaking wet top.

"PERVERT!" Akane remedied that situation by smashing her lecherous excuse for a fiancé to the ground. Naturally enough, this ripped the hose from his grasp, causing water to be sent flying in numerous directions. Akane became slightly damp and even more ticked off, whereas Ranma found his birth species washed away.

"Geez, will you give it a rest?" Ukyo snarled, tempted to give the other girl a good hard slap. She had spent the whole day at the baths, trying more and more frantically to figure out the particulars of the curse Shampoo had so casually saddled her with, but now she was seriously regretting not leaving earlier to meet Ranma for the final, and more importantly Akane-free class of the day. "That wasn't him trying anything perverted, Akane! He just wanted to make sure I wasn't going to turn into a cat!" The worst of her anger expended, her worry rose up again to dominance. "Ranma honey, did you really know that would happen?" It seemed likely, as surely her fiancé wouldn't have so cavalierly risked exposing himself to his worst fear.

Ranma nodded, giving an encouraging cheep. Truth be told, he didn't absolutely know for sure, but he had a suspicion strong enough that he'd have backed it in a bet with Nabiki.

Akane had made the connection too. "Oh, that's right! That must be it." Relief was far and away her greatest emotion, but the youngest Tendo still managed to speak with the faintest hint of cattiness as she continued, "Guess Ranma never told you about that time, right Ukyo? His and Shampoo's first date, I mean."

"Akane, I am not in the mood to—" With some effort, Ukyo swallowed her first choice of words, "_jack_ around here. If you know what's going on, please tell me."

"It's got to be Instant Maoniichuan," Akane replied. Off to the side, Ranma nodded his head in agreement. "That's a powdered form of Jusenkyo water. If you mix it into normal water, then anything you splash will change into whatever type of spring the powder was for. But it's a one use only thing, as soon as you transform again, the Instant curse is gone." She supposed it was the same whether you changed back with hot water, or had a preexisting true curse and got hit again with normal cold water.

"You... you mean... I'm not..." There was a tiny part of Ukyo that had dared to hope this ever since her trembling immersion into the first cold-water pool so many hours ago. That part was suddenly growing by leaps and bounds. "I'm really not cursed? Not for real?"

"I'm sure of it," Akane said. "Believe me, as much time as I've spent around Ranma and Mr. Saotome, I can tell you one thing. With a real Jusenkyo curse, any cold water will change you."

Ukyo held silent for a few moments, then heaved a long, ragged sigh. "Thank goodness for that." Another period of silence, as the flood of relief crested and began to ebb down from its all-consuming high mark. Once it had receded enough, the chef found herself with the beginnings of curious uncertainty. "But then... if it was just a one-use thing... why'd she do it?"

Akane made a wordless noise of disgust. "You have to ask? She wanted to mess with your head, of course! Or... no, wait..." the youngest Tendo's eyes widened as a rather worse picture dawned on her. "It's a warning, Ukyo. It's got to be!"

"A warning, huh?" Ukyo snorted. "If she thinks she can scare me away from Ranma honey with this, she's got another think coming!"

"No, that's not it! Ukyo, listen to me!" Akane declared. "Last week, Ranma asked Shampoo to get some Nannichuan sent from China, for Ryoga and Mr. Saotome. The next day she called and said Cologne said it was all right, and she'd written the letter back home asking them to send it."

Ukyo blinked. "And this applies how?"

"Don't you get it? If they're sending Nannichuan, _real_ Nannichuan instead of the Instant stuff she used to trick Ranma that one time, they can send real Drowned Cat water as well!" The words tumbled out of Akane's mouth, surging as if on the waves of the sea of creeping horror she felt. "This is Shampoo's warning of what she's gonna do to you, to _us_, if she doesn't get what she wants!"

The chef bit her lip, feeling worry begin to erode the relief she was feeling. She didn't want to believe that, but didn't think it safe to dismiss the idea outright either. "Akane, are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure! This is exactly the kind of thing that worthless _bitch_ would do!" Far stronger language than Akane almost ever used, but remembering poor Ryoga and how Shampoo had heartlessly cursed him just so he wouldn't have an advantage over Ranma, the rage and contempt and fear rose up like a seething pool of bile. She also remembered that Shampoo had only agreed to reverse Ryoga's curse after Ranma had asked her to, a meeting he hadn't allowed Akane to be present for... and that the Amazon hadn't yet specified what she wanted as payment...

"I don't know," Ukyo continued. She was aware that she was trying to convince herself of something she really, really wanted to believe. All the same, she couldn't find a flaw in the logic of what she was saying. "Why wouldn't she have done that a long time ago if she was going to do it? For that matter, why give a warning at all? And if she did decide to warn us, why not actually tell me that's what she meant? Her Japanese still sucks, but it's good enough to get something like that across."

"I don't know!" Akane's tone made it clear enough that she didn't think that was any sort of substantial problem with her hypothesis. "She's a Chinese Amazon. Who knows _what_ she's really thinking... other than 'obstacles is for killing', of course."

_'Considering that you're still alive and she could put you down in three seconds flat...' _Ukyo mused, more dubious than ever. And of course there was one thing she couldn't afford to bring up now; unlike Akane, Ranma had told her the truth about how Ryoga had acquired his new curse. _'Sure, Shampoo replaced Bacon-boy's old one without his agreeing to it, but that was only because Ranchan more or less asked her to. It's not like either Akane or I have to worry about that.'_ Her train of thought was broken as an irate older woman walked up, gave her the evil eye, switched off the still-gushing hose, and dragged it back into her yard. The slam of the gate behind her expressed her emotions as well or better than the words she opted not to say to members of the infamous Nerima Wrecking Crew.

The action served to remind Ukyo that, out-of-sight-out-of-mind notwithstanding, it wasn't just her and Akane at this little meeting. "My place is closer than yours. Let's go back there and talk this out some more. Ranchan, I'll get your stuff... Ranchan?" she repeated, looking down to the last known location of her feathered fiancé. His clothes were still there, but Ranma was conspicuous only by his absence.

Akane, acting on basic instinct, swiveled to face the general direction of the Cat Café. Scanning the skies, she quickly spotted a number of black specks, any one of which could be the missing boy. For a very long moment she teetered on the verge of racing toward the restaurant herself on an intercept course. But then, remembering that Genma was waiting for her, and more importantly so was the training that would let her put the Amazon in her place once and for all, she sighed and turned away. "I've got to go, Ukyo. I'll see you in class tomorrow, and we can talk more about this then." She gathered up Ranma's clothes and schoolbag, and walked away toward home. After a few uncertain seconds staring at Akane's retreating back, Ukyo turned and began walking away as well.

"Where are you going?" Akane called sharply a minute later, having checked backward over her shoulder. Ukyo stopped, turned, and stared blankly back at her. Akane jerked her head, indicating a different path than the one the chef was taking. "The Cat Café is _that_ way. If you're looking for Ranma, don't you think you should start there?"

* * *

Akane whipped the door open with a bang. Striding into the dojo and seizing eye contact with Genma, she barked out a question he wasn't exactly prepared for. "How quickly is this training going to give me good results?"

Genma hesitated, buying time to observe her and consider his words before replying. Akane's face was flushed with the clear evidence of fury, but it almost seemed like the tremble in her lips and her clenched fists was from some other emotion. "Only you can answer that, Akane," he said slowly. "What you get out of the training depends on how much you put into it. Did something happen today that makes it more important to you?"

"You could say that," she snarled. "Ukyo wasn't at school today, but she caught up with me and Ranma as we were walking home. And it turned out that Shampoo was the reason she wasn't there!"

"And...?" her sensei prompted.

"And that... that... that _Amazon_ ambushed her on her own way to school! You remember that time Ranma thought he was getting a real cure for dating her? Remember how that powder let you and him get in our koi pond and not change?" Akane waited for Genma to grimace and nod, then continued, "Well, she used something like that on Ukyo this morning. Except it was the Spring of Drowned Instant Cat!"

Genma blinked, but didn't show any more emotion than puzzlement. "So what? It's not like a one-use thing really matters," he grumbled.

"Well, I think what it was really saying matters a lot," Akane retorted bitterly. "We've still got about two weeks before the real Jusenkyo water Shampoo ordered for you and Ryoga gets here. I need to know if that's enough time for me to be able to settle things with her once and for all. Because it's obvious what she really meant by doing this to Ukyo."

A bit of exasperation entering Genma's voice, he asked, "And what is that, oh wise teacher?"

Well, it wasn't like she hadn't known where Ranma got his brains from. "What kind of question is that? It's a warning to give up now, because when the real Nannichuan water is coming so is the real stuff from her old spring!" Akane glared at Genma as strongly as he could, but her expression was not enough in and of itself to mask the fear she was feeling. Only the elder Saotome's shock kept him from noticing that. "So tell me, Mr. Saotome. Are you going to be able to help me finish things before it comes to that?"

"I... I don't..." Genma's mouth gaped feebly open and closed for a few silent seconds, before he managed to pull himself together. "Where's Ranma? This is more important than your training, Akane!"

"He flew straight on to the Cat Café," Akane shot back. "And what do you mean, more important than my training? I came back here instead of going after Ranma because you're supposed to help me finally be able to take Shampoo down for good!"

"Yes, of course, but it's not going to happen in two weeks!" Genma barked back. "Come on, we need to get Soun and go after that foolish boy of mine!"

"Hold it." The words were spoken in tones of cold, careful control, but were no less intense for that. Nabiki stepped into the dojo doorway, left conveniently open by her sister's earlier entry. "This is no time for running off without a plan."

"Nabiki, what are you even doing here?" Akane demanded. "And why should we wait!"

"I noticed your mood almost the second you came in the front door," the middle Tendo replied. "You hurried through the house so fast I didn't get a chance to stop you and ask what was wrong. So I followed you out here and overheard this little tragedy in three acts." Her eyes narrowed. "Or at least, that's what it looks like it's shaping up to be. Mr. Saotome, I want you to take several deep breaths, count to twenty in Sanskrit, and calm down."

"What? I don't know Sanskrit," Genma objected, knocked off-balance even through his previous emotional state by the bizarre nature of the request.

"Well, that just means you'll have a little longer to recover yourself, right?" Nabiki asked with a smirk.

"Young lady, this is no time to be standing around _talking!_" the elder Saotome growled. "My boy's heading straight into the lion's den, his real fiancée just let him go off alone, and you're only making things worse! Get out of the doorway or I'll make my own!"

All traces of humor vanished from Nabiki's mien as she did just that: stepped forward out of the doorway and strode briskly toward Genma. "Now you listen to me and you listen good," she grated, summoning forth every ounce of authority she could muster, and silently thanking Happosai for the conditioning he'd given his disciples. Genma was already taking his first step backward before she'd taken her fourth toward him. "Mr. Saotome, you are a good martial artist, and an excellent teacher. The results you got with Ranma are more than enough evidence of that. But I'd like you to take this moment, think long and hard, and tell me this: when was the last time you planned something that didn't have to do with martial arts and it worked out like you were thinking?

"Oh, yes, there's one other caveat," she continued. "Something that didn't involve getting Ranma to clean up a mess you'd made." Nabiki finished her request and allowed herself one quick knife-edged smile. It didn't relieve any of the pressure she was putting on the elder Saotome, though.

"Nabiki, standing around and doing nothing isn't any better!" Akane protested.

"No, but standing around and talking and thinking are about ten billion times better," her sister riposted, not taking her eyes away from her current target.

"Urrrgh! Fine!" Akane shouted once it became clear to her that Genma wasn't going to say anything. "I'll go get Dad and we can talk about this some more. I didn't really want to face Shampoo anyway until it was for real."

"Hold it!" the middle Tendo barked before her sister could take even one step. "Let's leave Daddy out of this. You know how emotional he gets, Akane. How do you think he'd react to the thought that his precious little girl might be in danger of getting her own Jusenkyo curse before long? Why, I'm amazed he's agreed to let you train to seriously fight Shampoo at all!" She said this last in a tone thick with meaning, keeping a careful eye on Genma. It had been a shot in the dark, one backed up by nothing but her instincts, and it was thus all the more satisfying to see the part-time panda flinch. _'I thought so. Daddy at least doesn't want this training to be used for what is supposedly its very purpose. Now I wonder, Mr. Saotome... just who are you fooling? Daddy? Akane? Yourself? Or all of the above?'_

Akane, meanwhile, had only paid attention to Nabiki's question. She had to agree that her sister had a point, sarcastic and cynical though she might be. Nonetheless, she felt a little uneasy about complying with Nabiki's request. Perhaps it was residual guilt at how she'd gone straight over Soun's head to arrange the training with Genma and how her father hadn't said so much as a cross word to her about it afterward, but she wasn't comfortable now with leaving him out again just for her convenience. "But even so..." she started.

"I said leave it, Akane!" Nabiki snapped. An instant later she realized the mistake. She'd dedicated too much of her attention to processing the input she'd just gained from Genma's reaction, and not enough to handling her sister. Akane _could_ be forced into things, but it invariably hurt her. Far better to lead her gently and subtly along, even if the success rate wasn't quite as high.

"Oh, really. When did you get so bossy, Nabiki?" her little sister snapped right back.

"When did you get so impulsive?" Nabiki countered lightly, all traces of impatience and ill temper now vanished. "Sorry about that, it really didn't come out like I meant it to. But think it through, little sister—it's only going to hurt Daddy to hear something like that. Who in this family is THAT going to help? Though I will say it might help somebody," she continued, allowing some anger, directed away from her sister, to seep back into her voice. "If Ranma comes winging his way back home today and gets met at the door by a Demon Head to end all Demon Heads, it's not going to make the Amazon alternative look any less appealing to him."

"...Maybe you're right," Akane conceded, convinced by that argument as she hadn't been by Nabiki's earlier reasoning.

"I usually am," Nabiki said, buffing her nails against her shirt and inspecting them with hooded gaze.

"Bah. I still haven't heard anything to keep me here!" This was Genma, more or less recovered from the vision of Nabiki-as-authority-figure.

"Then let me ask a few questions. This first one's for you, Mr. Saotome, since you're the martial arts expert here." Nabiki paused just long enough for her flattery, her carefree tone, and her innocent expression to begin disarming Genma. "Suppose you, Akane, and Daddy were to hurry off to the Cat Café and catch Ranma there. Suppose Shampoo had spun him some kind of song-and-dance about her really having a good, innocent reason for doing what she did, and now the two of them are enjoying a bowl of ramen that might or might not have a few... shall we say, _exotic_ ingredients added. Suppose the three of you bust into the place and demand for Ranma to leave and for Shampoo to finally pull her claws out of him once and for all. What do you suppose happens then?"

Genma blinked, wishing there were more time to think things through. Rapid intelligent response in noncombat areas just wasn't his forte. "What does that have to do with me being a martial arts expert?"

"I mean, what happens when the inevitable brawl starts up and Cologne joins into the fray?" Nabiki was still using the carefree tone and innocent expression, though they were more a cruelty than a reassurance now. "Even if you did get Ranma on your side, do you think it would matter? The only one in our corner who can really match her is Happosai."

"DON'T SAY HIS NAME!" Under the current circumstances, this response came straight from Genma's brainstem without needing to wait on his higher order functions. After the horror of his and Soun's recent training trip, the last thing they wanted was to summon the Master back.

Nabiki glared, inflated her lungs, and yelled, "Happosai! Happosai! Happosai! _Happosai!_ HAPPOSAI!" She took quite a bit of pleasure in Genma's panicking response, though she would have been happier if what the old man feared really had happened. "Mr. Saotome, this is exactly what I'm talking about when I say you need to think before you act," she rebuked. "If you're really worried about the Amazons finally getting a serious claim on Ranma, don't you think you ought to be hoping the one player we have that can stand up to Cologne makes it back sometime soon?"

Genma took a minute to process this. Then, the strain of the paradox proving too much, his eyes rolled up in the back of his head and he fainted dead away.

"Oh, honestly," Akane muttered. "Grandfather Happosai may be a pain in the neck, but I don't see why they're so afraid of him."

"That's my point exactly, little sister."

"Huh? What is?" Akane asked, confused by Nabiki's words and seizing on another potential distraction. If they weren't going to head to the Cat Café and Ranma, she would at least have liked to spend the time until he came back training as hard as possible. Maybe she wasn't going to be able to beat Shampoo before the real water got here in another couple of weeks, but at least practicing would keep her thoughts away from anxiety over it. "What are you talking about?"

"It's something that doesn't make sense because we don't have all the facts. Just like another matter I could name," Nabiki answered. "So now I'm going to ask you some more things about this business with Ukyo, Shampoo, and the Instant Maoniichuan."

"I don't really know anything else," Akane pointed out. "We'll have to wait for Ranma to get home and ask him." Her expression darkened. "And try to figure out what's true in what he tells us, what's his BS, and what's lies that Shampoo fed him and he didn't see through."

"I didn't mean those kinds of questions," Nabiki returned, suppressing a sigh. "Here's the first one: if Shampoo is really planning to use real Maoniichuan on you or Ukyo, why would she tip her hand ahead of time with the Instant stuff?"

Akane stared blankly back at her. "You're asking me that too? So did Ukyo. Is it really that hard to figure out?"

"Humor me, little sister."

"It's a warning! She's telling us what's going to happen for real if we don't give up and let her have everything her way!"

"So now you're an expert on how Shampoo thinks, are you?" Nabiki asked lightly. That contrasted enough to an admission Akane had made to Ukyo not an hour before that it brought the youngest Tendo up short. "Akane, here's some food for thought: people do not act randomly. Even crazy people who do crazy things, do them because those things make sense in their own fractured view of the world. So, next question: Does Shampoo have any reason to believe you or Ukyo would back off due to intimidation? Or has she seen with her own two eyes that it doesn't work at all?"

Shampoo had certainly tried those very tactics against her in the early days, Akane remembered. But Nabiki was right; it hadn't worked and the Amazon hadn't kept repeating the failed tactic. At least not seriously. "Um..."

"And here's another one. Have you forgotten that by all our evidence Shampoo needs to clear it through Cologne first when she gets real Jusenkyo water shipped out here?"

"What does that have to do with anything!"

"Think it through, Akane." This time Nabiki failed to suppress her sigh. "Shampoo might be impulsive enough to think dropping a permanent curse, especially _that_ one, on you or Ukyo might make her own chances better. But Cologne is too smart not to see how Ranma would really react. Count on it, Akane—she'd put the executive veto on it."

"Ranma didn't seem too terribly upset with Shampoo for what she did to Ryoga!" Akane made the protest, but even to her own ears it was weak. Ranma hadn't been happy about it either, he had promised to share his waterproof soap with Ryoga, and he'd even arranged for Shampoo to undo what she did.

Nabiki shrugged. "Since he honestly thinks he himself is better off with a Falcon curse than with none at all, that had to have an impact on how much Ryoga getting one would bother him."

_'Okay, okay, she's right. This is another one of those times when I shouldn't be thinking about Ranma or blaming him for stuff. It's all Shampoo's fault and that's what I need to be focusing on.'_ Even if it was scarier to contemplate going against someone who wouldn't hold back from hurting her. Aloud, she said, "So what are you really saying here, Nabiki? I should just kick back and relax? There's no danger after all?" Akane's tone and expression conveyed the meaning that her words by themselves didn't. Chances were less than zero that she would agree to such propositions.

"No. I'm saying that the biggest danger here is if you or somebody else," she glanced disparagingly at the now-snoring Genma, "go blundering off without any idea of what's really going on. And yes, you should kick back and relax, at least for the next few days. Give me time to do what I do best, collect the facts and put them together."

"Nabiki... I don't know..." She knew full well that her sister was cleverer than she was, and especially that Nabiki's mind worked more quickly. That didn't mean Akane was willing to acquiesce completely now, just on her middle sister's say-so.

"Please, Akane." It was time for a tactic she very rarely used in dealing with Akane, or anyone else for that matter. Nabiki braced herself, and let her mask slip just a little, showing true emotions and speaking with utter honesty as she said, "I sincerely believe that if you light into Ranma when he gets home, demanding to know what really happened with him at the Cat Café and yelling at him and calling him names if he says Shampoo had her reasons, that you'll be playing right into Cologne's hands. Please give me time to do what I can first."

"...Okay," Akane agreed. It would be hard, but surely she could afford that much time if this mattered so much to her sister. "Five days, Nabiki. Until then I'll listen to what Ranma has to tell me if he volunteers anything, but I won't press him. And I definitely won't go after Shampoo yet."

Nabiki breathed a genuine sigh of weary relief. One more crisis averted. "Thank you, Akane."

"No charge for family," Akane said with a half-hearted smile. "Is there anything else you wanted, big sister?"

"Nope, I'm good."

"Okay. I need to get back to training then."

Nabiki nodded absently, barely hearing her younger sister's comment. _'That went easier than I expected,'_ she congratulated herself as she allowed the tension to drain out of her. _'I've always been able to nudge Akane into something when it's really important, but it's almost never been that easy to get her to actually see reason. Could it be... could it be she's finally starting to grow up? To move past this phase of just seeing things how she wants to? Could my baby sister finally be learning to let go of the old, stupid patterns that have chained her down and put her whole family at risk before?'_

"HIII-YA!" Akane's strike smashed the stack of bricks to so much rubble.

_'Yeah, right, Nabiki,'_ the middle Tendo thought mockingly to herself. _'Dream on.'_

* * *

At top speed he could have covered the distance to his ultimate destination in minutes, no matter which form he wore. Instead, Ranma chose to fly slowly and lazily along, buying the time he would need for contemplation. He spent the first few minutes of the flight climbing higher in a long looping circle, while keeping one eye focused on the ground below. He breathed one sigh of relief when Akane walked away toward home, another when Ukyo turned to do the same, and then a third after his oldest friend ignored what had sure looked to him like an order to head toward the Cat Café instead of her own restaurant. If either of the girls had chosen to rush off and confront Shampoo, Ranma would have poured on the speed to get there first, get Shampoo transformed, and fly away with her to talk this over without the kind of nuclear meltdown a confrontation between the fiancées might have created.

He was thankful that hadn't been necessary. He wanted more time to think things through before facing Shampoo about this morning's antics. And so Ranma flew in ever-widening circles, finally satisfying himself that neither Akane nor Ukyo was going to change her mind about heading to the Amazon stronghold. _'I swear, it looked like Akane was more eager to go for Shampoo's throat than Ucchan was,' _he thought. After considering that for a few minutes, though, it no longer seemed so strange. _'But I guess I can understand that. Ucchan had to still be off-balance. What with something like that happening to her, or rather what she thought happened, and then spending the whole day panicking and trying to figure out what was really going on... and then getting good news like that... Yeah, it's not that surprising that she'd want to take some time to settle down before making her reply.'_ In fact it was kind of like the Saotome Secret Technique—Run, Think, Attack. He just hoped Ukyo's inevitable counterattack didn't make things worse. Ranma knew he would be tempted to go way too far if someone ever hit him with Maonichuan, whether it was Instant or not.

Of course, something like that wasn't as bad for his oldest friend as it would be for him. Nonetheless, Ranma still felt quite a bit of irritation as he considered Shampoo's action. _'Where the heck does she think she gets off doing that anyway? Shampoo knows what it's like to get changed against her will. She oughta have enough sympathy not to push it onto other people! At least, not Ucchan,'_ he amended. He wouldn't have liked it, but at least he could have understood it a lot better if she'd targeted Akane for this morning's dousing. His shorthaired fiancée had used Shampoo's old curse against her far more times than he wanted to think about. But Ukyo had never done so, to the best of his knowledge.

Thinking of these things was causing his levels of anger and irritation to rise. With a mental grunt, Ranma turned his thoughts to the other side of the coin, from Ukyo to Akane. _'Man, she sure didn't hold back from thinking the worst,' _he thought. _'Made up her mind right away, too, set it in stone quicker than Ryoga could blow a hole in the ground. Who knows? Maybe she was right about some of it, like thinking Shampoo did this to mess with Ucchan's head. But it ain't like she's got any kind of right to just decide that and treat it like some kind of holy, self-evident truth or something.'_ Just like he had done, just like he had regretted, when Shampoo had told him how long the magic of the Falcon water would really have lasted._ 'Don't want to make that mistake again.'_

These thoughts weren't as effective at reducing his anger as the earlier ones had been at stoking it, but they were enough to convince Ranma that he had better not just rush off riding the surge of his emotions. Maybe he would have to get tough with Shampoo over this—or as tough as he could manage, anyway—but he was going to listen to her first and act after he'd heard her side of the story. At the very least, if Shampoo cheerfully related something that proved Akane's first guess was more or less right, it ought to be more effective to chew her out using the ammunition the Amazon herself had provided.

With this thought, he altered the curve of his flight, turning toward the Cat Café. He covered the remaining distance quickly, concentrating on what he was going to say, and managing for once to realize ahead of time that if he wasn't careful he was going to end up getting a hot shower and giving Shampoo a free show. That realization and the plans to avoid it were distracting enough to keep one particularly unwelcome thought buried in the back of his mind.

After all, he didn't even want to dream that Akane's second 'inspiration' regarding Shampoo's motives might be correct.

Finding Shampoo turned out to be easier than he'd expected. There was no need to actually enter the building; Shampoo herself was on top of the roof, moving through a slow, gentle, controlled kata. It wasn't a pattern Ranma had seen before, but he didn't have much time for analysis. As he descended the wind picked up around him, not with anywhere near the strength of the fiercest gusts he'd ridden in the past, but with oddly unpredictable cross-breezes that took much more concentration than usual to navigate. He was mildly proud that he still managed a perfectly-controlled landing ten feet in front of Shampoo. He gave a loud squawk to attract her attention, though the Amazon's kata was already gliding to a halt in response to his arrival.

"Airen? What you do here?" Shampoo asked once she'd come to a stop. She sounded oddly winded for someone who'd been doing such a low-impact exercise. Ranma wondered briefly if she'd been using it to cool down after a more strenuous workout.

Not that the question was important, compared to the one she had asked. Of course, he couldn't exactly give her the response she'd requested. Cocking his head to one side, he gave her the best reproving look he could manage, as if to say 'How am I supposed to answer that now? Hurry up and change too, and get rid of the language barrier.'

"Oh, right, you no can answer. Here, let Shampoo fix." The Amazon repeated the trick she'd performed a month ago when all this had started, pulling from nowhere two kettles and a small stove, and setting one of the former on top of the latter to heat.

Ranma skipped forward, cheeping negatively and shaking his head. Shampoo gave him a blank stare, which morphed into a smile of mingled surprise and happiness as he gestured emphatically toward the kettle, then toward her. "You want to fly again? Okay, is good!" She didn't quite resist the temptation to slip out of her tunic and pants before using the unheated kettle to trigger her change, amused to no end by the way her transformed husband's eyes still managed to bulge so noticeably at the sight. "Hey, it's better than getting my clothes all wet," she said as she fluffed the water out of her feathers.

_'Uh huh. The same clothes she was wearing for practice, that she'd already been sweating in. Right.'_ Pushing those thoughts, and images, out of his mind, Ranma replied, "Listen, Shampoo. I need to talk to you about something."

"About what?" Why was he using that tone?

"About Ukyo," Ranma said, frowning as best he could.

Shampoo's expression curved to match, and she grumbled, "So she told you what I did? Did she tell you _all_ of it, Ranma?"

"Huh? All of it? What do you mean?"

"I mean, did she bother to tell you that I didn't just leave her to find hot water as best she could, but carried her to a place where she could change back without any trouble? Even without any embarrassment?" In truth, Shampoo hadn't much cared about that last one. She'd only been concerned that she wouldn't be putting her husband's oldest friend in any true physical danger, and the bathing gardens had been the nearest and easiest method of ensuring that. But then again, Shampoo reminded herself, she hadn't _had_ to carry Ukyo's clothes along with her and leave them for the chef. It was fair enough to point out how her actions had been suited to spare Ukyo's feelings, even if it hadn't technically been much of a concern.

"Yeah, she did say that." It was another reason Ranma hadn't been comfortable with letting his natural irritation at the attack on Ucchan get out of hand.

Shampoo blinked. "Then... what's the problem?"

"What do you mean, 'What's the problem'? Just cause you could have done stuff a lot worse than you did doesn't make what you did do all right!"

"If you thought _that_ was my reason, then Ukyo obviously _didn't_ tell you everything," Shampoo snapped back. "I told her why I did this. You of all people would surely agree with it. Guess that's why she kept quiet and just made me out to be in the wrong."

Ranma cocked his head to the side, pondering that reply. He didn't think Ucchan would have deliberately left out something like that. Probably Shampoo had said her piece while the chef had been too shell-shocked to hear it. "So why did you do it?"

"So that she would know what it feels like," Shampoo said, kicking a hole in the theory Ranma had just finished forming. Before he could say anything else, she was continuing. "She needed to know what it's like to actually lose your body, to have your humanity washed away without anything you can say or do about it. She deserves to know exactly how it feels to get turned into something small and weak and fragile."

"Needs? Deserves? How do you figure that?" Ranma demanded.

"Because of how she won our last fight, that's how! It should have been a clean victory for me, I had her on the ropes fair and square! She ran out on the fight, left her stupid spatula behind even, and when I followed after her she caught me right in the face with a blast from a hose!"

Ranma blinked. "Oh." It was all he could find breath or strength to say.

Shampoo, by sharp contrast, was only picking up speed. "I can understand it if you're surprised, Ranma. I sure was. After all, she never used my old curse against me, right? Not like stupid Akane. Ukyo wasn't as strong as me, but she always fought fairly and with honor. And I respected that about her, respected that she wouldn't go for the cheap easy win. And it was all a damn lie! This time she told me to my face that the only reason she'd held back from doing that was because of how bad it was for you to be around a cat. And she said flat out that since that wasn't a problem anymore, from now on she was going to use this little tactic anytime she felt like it!"

The Amazon paused to take a few deep breaths and regain some semblance of calmness. "That's why I did what I did. I gave her a chance to see for herself what it was like, and I'm also giving her a chance to do the right thing and take back what she said about using my curse to win any fight she wants. If she doesn't, if she keeps on stooping that low, well, I ordered a whole crate full of Instant Drowned Cat Water, not just one packet. Next time maybe I'll let her find out for herself how much trouble it can be to find hot water on your own!" _'And if she still doesn't learn her lesson, we'll just have to take it from there...'_

Ranma took his own deep breath, and said, "There won't be a next time." He realized a second later that he'd said that a little too forcefully for something that ultimately wasn't his to command. He didn't have the right to simply declare that Ukyo would never try this trick again after he asked her not to, even if he believed that would be true. He amended, "At least, I hope not. I'll talk to Ucchan, Shampoo. I'll spell all that stuff out for her and ask her not to do it again." He paused, then said, "And, uh, about Akane..."

"Don't worry, Ranma." She was all too aware of what he was about to ask. Back before all this started, when she and Cologne had been discussing the idea of changing her curse, the Matriarch had finally managed to get it through her head just how traumatic it really was for her husband when she latched onto him in cat form. "I wouldn't do that to Akane. Not if you were anywhere nearby, that is. No, I thought of something better for her," the Amazon continued, killing Ranma's sense of relief as quickly as it had been birthed.

"And that would be?" he asked, reminding himself to hear her out before making any decisions or jumping to any conclusions.

"A different crate of Instant powders. One that would fit her even better," Shampoo said, her tone making Ranma think that if she had currently had a mouth instead of a beak, it would have curved in a wicked grin. "Spring of Drowned Sloth."

He blinked. "Spring of Drowned Sloth? If you've got that, why didn't you use it in the first place with Ucchan? That woulda been better than that horrible, evil... well, you know."

"No, I don't know," Shampoo countered. "I couldn't exactly have carried Ukyo to the bathing gardens if I'd used the other powder. Sloths may be slow, but they're not _that_ slow. I would have had to leave her to fend for herself."

"Yeah, but still..."

"But still nothing! She might have been a little late for her first class, but if I'd used the sloth curse how much of the day do you think she would have missed?"

Ranma stared back at her. "What're you talking about? She spent the whole day at the bath place, trying to figure out why she wasn't turning back into a cat with more cold water!"

She blinked. "What?"

"What do you mean, 'what'? She thought it was a real curse, and she spent all that time trying to find out how it really did work, since it wasn't doing what she thought it would!"

"Well, that wasn't what I expected. But it's not like there's any reason for me to feel guilty about this!" Shampoo said guiltily. "If it really did hit her that hard, that just means she'll have a better idea of what it's really like for you and me!"

"Yeah, well, for future reference, Shampoo... you really need to make yourself clearer. Your Japanese may be a lot better than any of us are at Mandarin, but Ucchan sure didn't get the point you were trying to make." Part of him still felt unhappy about how much more his friend had suffered than Shampoo had meant, but considering how many of his own problems and mistakes he'd finally begun facing and trying to fix, he wasn't about to come down too hard on the Amazon for making a misstep when she attempted the same thing. If even Ranma Saotome couldn't get everything right the first time around, what right did he have to expect it from other people?

"Fine. Please tell her just what I meant," Shampoo requested. "And Akane too. _Especially_ Akane," she said with a glower. "I can't even remember how many times she used my old curse against me. Make sure she understands that the time of no consequences is over for good."

"Okay, I'll tell her. But give me a chance to, okay? Don't go ambushing her and giving her a bath unless she uses your curse against you first. Let me have a chance to talk with her about not doing that any more."

Shampoo rolled her eyes. "She already tried once, picked a fight and tried to win it like that, but she wasn't good enough to pull it off. You think she'll listen to you?"

"I... I don't know. I hope so. Because you're right; doing something like that is going too far to win." Even in the darkest moments when he'd been most desperate to figure out a way to defeat Ryoga's Shi Shi Hokodan, that was one tactic he'd never seriously considered using. Now that he had his own nonhuman curse, this was something he was even more proud of. "I can sure say that, with everything that's been going on at Furinkan lately."

"Going on at Furinkan?" Shampoo echoed. "Is this about what Akane told me a couple of weeks ago, about Stupid Stick Boy managing to trigger your curse while the whole school was watching?"

"Oh, yeah," Ranma grumbled. "I'm not regretting making the switch, but I sure do wish the jerks at school wouldn't see it as such a golden opportunity." Shampoo made a concerned, inquisitive, 'go on' noise, which was more than enough encouragement for him to do just that. "I've had girls splash me a few times, acting like it was an accident, and of course they just so happen to have hot water right there to fix the 'mistake'."

"And how many free shows have you given out like that, dear?" Shampoo asked, her eyes narrowing dangerously.

"That'd be _none_, I'm proud to say," Ranma retorted, leaving out the fact that this wasn't entirely his doing. The first few times it had happened it had caught him totally off-guard, but each time the girl in question had been just as unprepared, in a different way, as he was. None had waited for him to get clear of his shirt before unleashing the 'apology' and hot water.He suspected they thought the reversed transformation would tear him right out of the garments, rather than having him expand to fill them as decently and normally as he had before the cold water.

"Congratulations, Ranma. Maybe you're getting better about avoiding attacks from girls after all," Shampoo said, deliberately not looking over at her remaining kettle, still sitting innocently atop a low-burning stove.

"Then of course there's the jerks from the falconry club. They want me to help them rip their competition to itty bitty pieces, and even after I've turned 'em down over and over they keep on begging and pleading with me to join the airborne half of the club." _'Better not go into more detail than that, though. Having Ucchan get onto those girls for this afternoon... that's one thing. But I think I'd just as soon not set Shampoo onto them.'_ And if it led to the guys in the club giving up on him and approaching Shampoo instead once they learned she had a Falcon curse too... that felt even less appealing, somehow.

"You mean, they keep asking and keep asking and keep on asking for you to do what they want, even after you've told them 'No' a thousand times?" Shampoo nodded. "I can see how that would be a pain." _'That reminds me, I ought to check with Great-Grandmother, find out of there's any word of Mousse coming back anytime soon.'_

"And let's not forget the so-called martial artists in the class below me, who think using my curse would be a great way to get a victory over someone who could normally flatten them with one hand tied behind his back. Not that any of them have managed it yet," Ranma said, preening ever so slightly. "But it's still a big fat waste of my time, dealing with challenges from these putzes who'd otherwise know better than to take me on." He knew they were trying to outlast his stash of waterproof soap. It was slightly worrisome that he'd used up most of the one bar that he had for his own use, but according to Akane the bars she'd had Nabiki order ought to arrive any day now.

"You say this is happening with the younger martial artists? What about Bokken Boy Kuno?"

Ranma heaved an aggravated sigh. "Things are both better and worse there than I expected. I seriously do not know where he gets his delusions, but he figures this is all part and parcel of me being a big, bad, dark, evil sorcerer. And he also apparently thinks it's some kind of sign that my powers are wearing out, or turning against me, or whatever. I think it's got something to do with him seeing me in the, uh, the... intheCatFistonetime," he screeched through the words as fast as possible, "and now knowing that I turn into a bird with cold water. I think he thinks that if he just splashes me enough, I'll move down another rank on the scale or something."

"But he's not attacking you? Not taking advantage of the opening? Weird," Shampoo opined. "But I'm not complaining."

"Well, I am," Ranma said. "Not about the 'not attacking when I'm a falcon' part, but the 'getting his stupid ninja peons to hide all over the school and try to catch me off-guard all the time'." At least it made for good awareness and response training, but as far as Ranma was concerned even that silver lining had already reached 'too much of a good thing' status. He couldn't dodge them all the time, and he sure couldn't stay protected all the time with waterproof soap. He'd even had to default on one challenge match when one particularly sneaky ninja had caught him in the shower just before he could apply his layer of protection.

"Hmmm... you know, husband, this might be a good time to finally quit wasting your time at that stupid school," Shampoo said oh-so-innocently. "I know it's given you some good challenges before, but I really think you've outgrown it now."

"That's not an option," Ranma stated. Before Shampoo could argue further, he elaborated. "Yeah, the stuff they go on and on about in class isn't much fun, but I've still got to put up with it. My mom would be disappointed if I just ditched school."

"Oh," Shampoo said, deflating noticeably. That put paid to pretty much any argument she might otherwise have made.

Both teens were silent for a few moments, thinking over the various things that had been said. Eventually, coming to a decision, Shampoo broke the silence. "Ranma... hearing all this, about everything that's going on at Furinkan... I've decided something. There's something I need to show you. Come over here."

Confused, but seeing no reason not to comply, Ranma fluttered across most of the three feet that had separated him from the Amazon. Incidentally, this left the kettle and stove a little too far behind him to be visible in his peripheral vision. "What is it?" He interrupted himself with a screech of surprise, a cry that morphed midway into a more human exclamation as hot water cascaded down over both him and Shampoo.

Shampoo smirked, then giggled, then laughed out loud as she watched Ranma freeze, recover, and scramble desperately to find his clothes. This time, of course, they were several miles away. "Here, silly," she said, taking pity on him and holding out her own pants.

Ranma grabbed them and slipped them on, thankful that this particular outfit had been a relatively loose one Shampoo had chosen for maximum mobility in her training, not one of the skin-tight ensembles she'd occasionally worn when she was the one looking for him. The pants were a little tight on him, and they were more than a little pink, but they were a good bit better than some of the things the Tendo sisters had forced him into in the past. They would do for the short amount of time it would take him to find a source of cold water. "Was there something you wanted to say?" he asked Shampoo, his voice heavy with sarcasm, and only shaking a little at the sight of the Amazon clad in just the remaining half of her outfit. At least the top was barely long enough to leave her R- rather than X-rated. "Or did ya just want to see?"

"Was both," the lavender-haired girl said with a completely unrepentant grin. "Shampoo get what she want to see, now is Ranma turn. Please pass Shampoo a kettle."

Ranma did as requested, locating and picking up the nearest empty kettle. It had come to rest a few inches behind him, and he wondered just how it had been induced to leave its previous perch on top of the stove. _'Maybe the old ghoul snuck up behind me and threw it when she knew Shampoo was ready?'_ There was no sign of Cologne to be seen now, but that didn't mean much. Pushing the thought aside, he tossed the object to Shampoo, who caught it in her left hand.

In her right she suddenly held the last item she'd had with her in storage, a single bonbori. "Watch close now," she said with a wink. Then, dropping all hints of playfulness in the interest of absolute focus, she tossed the kettle into the air and swung the mace. The air hummed with the force of the blow, which sent the now-badly-dented container soaring up, up, and away.

It was only impressive because the weapon missed its target by a good three inches.

Ranma blinked, rubbed his eyes, and mentally replayed the scene. Sure, he'd seen Kuno do significant damage from air pressure alone, but that had been the slowly-mounting result of a storm of thrusting strikes, not a single attack. And a swing at that! No, this went far beyond anything he'd seen the Blue Thunder pull off.

"Is secret of advanced style Great-Grandmother teaching Shampoo," the Amazon explained. "Special techniques work with element of air, lets you do things that make Hiryu Shoten Ha look like move for beginner." Although Cologne had warned her that it would take a long time to work her way up to those pinnacles of the Air style.

"Well, that's kinda cool, I guess," Ranma said, putting up as carefree and unconcerned a façade as he could manage. "Not like a weapons technique like that is really my thing, though."

Shampoo stuck out her tongue, furrowed her brow, and managed to levitate the bonbori two inches above her palm on a cushion of solid air. "So who say is just weapons? Ranma should be thankful," she said as she let the technique lapse. "Thankful Shampoo choose to show it this way. First plan was to wait until I had learn enough, then use it to kick you butt. Get you to join in training with Shampoo that way."

"Wait a minute," Ranma said. "Are you offering... I mean, asking me to...?"

She nodded. "Great-Grandmother say this style very, very good for curse Shampoo have now," the Amazon explained. "Say once I far enough along, these techniques let me fight and win no problem even in falcon body. Same thing must be true for Ranma too, right?" Noting her husband's stunned-but-intrigued expression, the gaping jaw contrasting with the gleam in his eyes, Shampoo gave another big smile and continued. "Is good news with what is happen at school, yes?"

"I... yeah, that might be true..." Certainly it was an appealing thought. He wasn't forgetting the things he'd told his father a few days ago about what was most important right now in his study of the Art, but all that stuff only applied to his birth body. A set of special techniques that he could use to fight even in his cursed form—that was a trump card worth quite a lot these days.

A bit of caution reared its ugly head then, as Ranma envisioned some of the responses he'd likely face back at the Tendo home if he waltzed back there and announced he was going to be spending as much time training with Shampoo as Akane was with his father. "But..."

Shampoo quickly interjected, before he could take that any farther. "Remember, sooner you start, sooner stupid boys and girls at school not cause any more problem. And," she hesitated just one moment longer, delaying the decision for one last second, then said, "and remember we never talk about how Ranma repay me for get more Jusenkyo water for Ryoga and father? This will cover it. Ranma train with Shampoo, learn with Shampoo and help with my own learning, I will call it even." Though she did hate the thought of losing all the dates that debt could have bought her.

That was more than enough for him. Ranma's face set like flint. His fists clenched with determination. His eyes shone with strength and resolve. His borrowed pink pants gleamed in the sunlight. "When can we start?"

* * *

"I still don't see why we had to wait so long to start this," Ranma grumbled.

Cologne gave him a flat stare. "It's been less than twenty-four hours, Son-in-law." And so it had. It was Saturday now, and the half-day of class at Furinkan had ended an hour ago. Ranma and Akane had headed home as usual, Akane to retire to the dojo, Ranma to tell everyone else he was going out to fly. And so he had, although the flight this time had only been as far as the bathhouse where Shampoo had washed his girl curse away. The repairs had been completed and the place was open for business once more, but Ranma still figured it was a good idea to keep one change of clothes there. After quickly exchanging feathers for cloth, he'd headed to the roof of the Cat Café to keep the appointment he'd made yesterday. That was where he stood now, with Shampoo about seven feet away on his left and Cologne roughly an equal distance straight ahead. Several crates were placed just behind the Matriarch, one large one with a stack of three smaller ones beside it.

"School today was okay?" This was the younger Amazon. Judging from Ranma's mood, she thought it probably hadn't been too bad. That grumble had sounded awfully familiar to her, carrying tones she'd heard in her own voice in the past when she'd pressed her great-grandmother about including more advanced techniques in her training. She could certainly sympathize with how eager he must be now to get started.

That didn't mean she wasn't going to enjoy watching him suffer through the first part of the training, of course.

"Yeah, it was fine. Only a few of Kuno's ninjas to waste my time. And speaking of wasting time..." Ranma said significantly.

Cologne had let him have the earlier remark for free. This time, though, she slung her staff in a move that had it boomeranging through the air to bonk her reluctant son-in-law's overly hard head, then return to her grasp. "It was hardly wasting time," she snapped at him. "What do you suppose would have happened if we had started right then and there, right after Shampoo led you down into the restaurant to ask and I said I'd teach you as well? Akane at least had to have believed that when you left her yesterday afternoon it was to seek out Shampoo. And if you hadn't come back from that meeting until many hours had passed? Do you _want_ them jumping on your back right from the very beginning?"

"Well, no," Ranma was forced to admit, glaring as he rubbed his head. Truth be told, the hit had barely stung, but the gesture in and of itself had been plenty irritating—not the least of which because Cologne had moved so fast he wouldn't have been able to block even if he'd been expecting the attack. "And I'll admit I didn't tell them what I was really going to do this afternoon. But I'm not so sure I feel like sneaking along for weeks, or months, or however long this takes, hiding it from them the whole time. As a matter of fact, I'm sure I don't want to."

"Good," Cologne returned, giving him a toothy grin. "Sounds like you're giving this more thought than you would have in the past. So tell me, Son-in-law, what do _you_ think is the best thing to do?"

"I'm not sure yet. Can't make that call without knowing how much time we're talking about," Ranma explained. "Like, how long will each training session last, how many different techniques are there for me to learn, are you gonna use the same kinda methods you did for the Chestnut Fist, all that stuff. But if I had to give an answer right off the bat, I'd say I'd like to keep this between us until I've learned at least one decently impressive move. That way when I let it slip to Pop and the Tendos what I'm really doing and they all start screaming their heads off, I can whip out the Wind Slash to give 'em a good example of just why it's worth it to let me keep up the training."

"My, my, I am impressed. I'd say that's a very good approach to take. A very well thought-out plan," Cologne said generously. It was nice to know she hadn't wasted the hours she'd spent cooking up enough illusions to prevent anyone watching from realizing Ranma was here. "Just to warn you, it will take you a little while longer than you might be expecting. The first training exercise in this style is just that—a training exercise. It doesn't directly teach any of the techniques. Those come later. And for the record, there's nothing in this arsenal called the Wind Slash."

Ranma shrugged. "Just made that up as something that sounded like it fit."

"Well, if you manage to master this style to the point where you're coming up with your own revisions, feel free to use it. Now then." Cologne cleared her throat. "As much as I'm sure you'd rather just jump right into the training, I want to take a moment now to talk about the style and the things you'll be learning."

"Why's that?"

_'Wonderful. Only one sentence in and already he's interrupting me,' _Cologne thought sourly. "Because although we'll be starting with moves that are much less powerful than the Hiryu Shoten Ha, we will end up with techniques that put it to shame. But this goes beyond techniques and individual moves, sonny boy. You'll be learning principles, basic foundational truths about chi and how to align it with air... the single most important element in almost any place a human is likely to go."

"Is power, Airen," Shampoo said solemnly. "Shampoo was not kidding when I say if I had wait longer, learn more of style, could have kick you butt with it."

"A-HEM!" Cologne gave her great-granddaughter the evil eye. "If I could continue without more interruptions from either of you..." Shampoo gave a sheepish grin. Ranma nodded, unsure as to whether he should be thoughtful or annoyed at the lavender-haired girl's message. "My great-granddaughter is correct, but she's also understating things. At the highest level of mastery, the principles of the Air style will allow you to disrupt a fully-fledged tornado." Cologne paused just for a minute, then added, "Or cause one."

"Okay, I get you," Ranma said quietly. He and Genma had seen one once, much closer than they would have liked, and so he knew how much more powerful the real thing was than the imitation he could pull off. He knew just what would happen to the neighborhood if he unleashed something like that in one of his typical challenge matches. If he'd thought the old ghoul might be implying that he'd do something like that, he would have been much less polite in his response.

That wasn't, couldn't be, what she had meant. It was a lesson that he'd already learned, one the Matriarch must know anyone at his level had already received, about respecting the extraordinary abilities that his training gave him. If she didn't think he knew that already, she wouldn't have taught him the Chestnut Fist, let alone the second Amazon secret she'd revealed. "So where does this style start? And is it gonna help or hurt me that I already know the Hiryu Shoten Ha?" Judging from what she'd said, it couldn't be one of the basics of the style.

"Neither. I can understand why you might think otherwise, but the Hiryu Shoten Ha is actually classified as aura-based. The effect happens because of your aura's contrast to that of the enemy or enemies you lead into the spiral. And while it's true the effect manifests itself in the air, that doesn't mean it's an Air technique in the real sense of the word." Noting the subtle signs of restlessness from her great-granddaughter, the twitching that wasn't quite managing to make it all the way to an eager squirm, Cologne decided to be generous. "Shampoo will explain why that is."

"For Air technique, Ranma must learn to do what Great-Grandmother already say. To make his chi line up with the air around him, make them work together. Is like you extend own self into the air, make it do things directly because it is like part of you. That is heart of Air style. Each new lesson is just how to take it further, how to control more power at once for new effect, how to get same effect without spend so much of own strength, how to balance energies to bring off something you not know how to before."

Ranma considered that for a little while. It still felt really odd to think that a move like the Hiryu Shoten Ha wasn't considered part of the Air style, but from what Shampoo had described he could kind of see the reasoning. When he performed that technique, almost all his energy and concentration were focused inward, keeping his soul like ice and executing the spiral. The attention that wasn't tied up in those tasks was allocated to his opponent or opponents. Whereas Shampoo's description sounded like he'd be extending himself outward, making himself part of the air around him, or the air part of him, or both at the same time. It was a big difference from just projecting his own energy, be it confidence or cold.

"So..." he said slowly, after pausing long enough to be sure that Cologne wasn't about to jump back into her narrative. "If I learn enough of the style, would it actually let me fly?"

Shampoo gave him the strangest look he'd received all week. "Ranma already know how to fly, remember?"

He rolled his eyes. "What I _meant_ was, as a human. Like, if something ever came up and I had absolutely no choice other than getting rid of the falcon curse."

"The answer is yes and no," Cologne replied. "Yes, you can fly, if by 'flight' you mean 'controlled passage through the air'. The Chariot of the Storm technique will carry you as far through the sky as you like, so long as you have strength and control enough to maintain it. But the concentration required means it will never be as enjoyable as what you have now. There's no substitute for natural flight in a form designed for it."

_'Well, I'll just have to hope Mom agrees with me when I tell her all that stuff about how cool it is. Grabbing hold of the dream ordinary guys can't even touch really ought to count towards being a man among men,' _Ranma thought, mentally crossing his fingers while knocking on wood.

"And anyway Shampoo already tell you these secrets let you fight and win even in falcon body against stupid fighters at Furinkan," the lavender-haired girl said. "Ranma should not be thinking about giving body up to make that place easier. Would be better to change schools if come to that." Although, if they really were giving him that much of a hard time, maybe the best thing of all would be for her to enroll at Furinkan to stand by her beloved's side.

"Would you mind not jumpin' to conclusions, Shampoo?" Ranma grumbled. "I get enough of that from Akane." Feeling guilty at the way the Amazon suddenly paled and looked stricken to the core, he added in a milder tone, "I wasn't thinking about giving it up. I was thinking about what could happen if I had no choice _but_ to give it up."

Judging from Shampoo's expression, she didn't exactly appreciate the distinction but was unwilling to push her luck further. Cologne regained control of the conversation. "In any case, before we actually begin your training I will have Shampoo demonstrate the techniques she has been learning. But before that, Ranma, I would like you to give your word." She vaulted to the top of her staff and bounced forward five feet, to better look him in the eye. "I know how observant you are when it comes to the Art, how much detail you can notice and retain from simply watching something done once. You won't catch all of what you're seeing, but you will doubtless get some of it. I need you to promise that you won't try to train for these on your own. Not until you have finished the first exercise to my satisfaction, that is. Once you've accomplished that, practicing on your own will be safe enough."

"Safe?" Ranma echoed. "Okay, you got my promise. Now could ya tell me why I needed to give it?"

"It goes back to what my great-granddaughter already told you about the heart and soul of the Air style. The primary training exercise is what teaches you to align your chi with the air around you. You need that as your foundation before you even begin to think seriously about replicating the effects Shampoo will demonstrate. Your own question about the Hiryu Shoten Ha should be enough of a clue," the Matriarch explained. "The truth is, you can create similar or even nearly-identical effects to the beginning techniques in other ways. And if you did learn, oh, let's say to imitate the Wind Strike through chi projection alone, rather than truly combining your chi with the air, you would end up with a useful skill... and it would be much harder to learn the things that cannot be faked like that."

"Got it. I ain't gonna promise not to _think_ about it, but I won't try to learn any of these moves Shampoo's gonna show me until you say I'm ready."

"Thank you, Son-in-law. Shampoo, if you would, please demonstrate and explain the Buzzing Fist."

"Is what I already show you, Ranma," Shampoo said. "First real move of Air style is called Buzzing Fist." She held out her right arm, fingers curled loosely into a fist. "Concentrate air very very tight around own hand and make vibrate." The hum sounded again that Ranma had heard two times before, once when her bonbori hadn't made contact with the kettle, once when the weapon had floated over her hand. Now that he was looking for such detail, he was able to make out a rippling distortion effect around her hand, similar in appearance to heat waves but not identical. "Forms a shield around hand, extends reach a little, gives extra force to punch and also protects when you hit or block. And the buzzing is also good to blast through loose stuff like sand, or shake away water before it can splash you." The Amazon snorted. "Have to be careful with that last one, though, have to control the direction of how the air moves. Jusenkyo mean if you just let it go random, for sure some will splash back on you."

"And yes, there will be a training exercise where I send cold water your way and you have to deflect it with this skill," Cologne added.

_'Great, more chances for me to give Shampoo a few more free shows,' _Ranma thought. _'Well, that training won't happen until after I've finished whatever the first exercise is, and it also sounds like it won't happen until I get the basic training for the Buzzing Fist. That means I can train on my own to nail down that particular trick to it first.'_ Out loud he said, "So what's the next move? Is that the very first thing you showed me, with the bonbori? Adaptin' these same principles to work with a weapon instead of your own body?"

"Is exactly right!" Shampoo said enthusiastically. "Ranma, you such good warrior, so quick to learn! Each time you do something like this it only make Shampoo happier to be you wife!"

"If we could move from pillow talk back to martial arts..." Cologne said as dryly as the desert sands, speaking before Ranma could make any kind of response.

"Oh, okay, right." Shampoo produced her scimitar. A similar buzz and ripple emanated from it. Ranma noted that the ripple extended down over the hand with which Shampoo held the weapon, though it was just barely visible there. "Similar technique have similar name. This is called Buzzing Strike. Is second technique Shampoo learn, but Great-Grandmother tell me that might not be same for you. To focus like this mean you has to have weapon you is very good with, very comfortable with. Even then is harder than just using own hand as focus."

"So if it's harder to do, why do it? Just for the lesson that learning it teaches? I mean, is there any advantage ta having a weapons variation instead of just the basic one?" Ranma wanted to know. "Other than the added range, I guess."

Shampoo nodded, suppressing an evil grin. _'Stupid Akane could tell you that one.'_ "Yes. Is one very good advantage. Great-Grandmother, you ready with paper cranes?"

"Yes." The Matriarch bounced to the top of the largest wooden crate, and used the tip of her staff to pop the lid off the topmost box in the adjacent stack of smaller ones. Inside the crate were a multitude of crisp, white, origami cranes. Cologne reversed her grip on the staff, bringing the knobby end down into the box and then pulling it out, sending a blizzard of paper birds fluttering toward Shampoo.

With a loud cry, Shampoo brought the sword around in a glittering arc. The closest of the birds was still a good three feet away, much too far removed for the rippling around the sword to affect it. However, as the sword reached the point of its arc closest to the blizzard of birds, the buzzing sound escalated to a roar, the ripple disappeared, and a massive gust of wind lifted the flock and sent them careening away into the wilds of Nerima.

"Is controlled loss of control," Shampoo said, doing her best to repeat the terms Cologne had used when explaining this to her, and wishing idly that she could perform the techniques for Ranma while they were in human form, then have the two switch to falcons to get rid of the stupid language barrier. And of course the switches back to human would be a nice added bonus... Forcibly reminding herself that Cologne had counseled her before this session not to come on too strong to Ranma during it, and feeling a bit of uneasiness that she might already have crossed that line, Shampoo continued, "With good hard steel as focus rather than flesh of own body, is safe to do. Let all the power you built up in shield of air blast out all at once, to give big gust of wind in direction Ranma choose. Enough to pick up opponent, especially if they too clumsy and slow and weak to be ready, and throw them back into a wall."

"Or into a koi pond," Ranma mused, thinking ahead to the time when he'd need to break the news of this training to his father. "So what's the name of this variation?"

"It doesn't actually have a name," Cologne said. "There are numerous techniques in this style to generate winds in one way or another. Since this one is basically a loss of control in a true technique, it isn't dignified with its own name."

"Name of move is Wind Slash," Shampoo said with a grin, pushing her luck once more. She was rewarded when Ranma chuckled and returned the smile.

Cologne smiled as well, though it was a sight less inherently appealing than her youngest descendant's expression. "Anyway, moving right along... Shampoo, demonstrate the technique Ranma really meant when he came up with that idea for a name."

Shampoo blinked, wondering whether her great-grandmother thought that instruction had been at all clear. Shrugging it off, she returned the sword to storage and proceeded to the next technique in the style. Hopefully that was what the Matriarch had meant. "Next one is called Wind Strike." She paused, wracking her brain for the right words in Japanese. "Is the first one that lets you control the air currents directly." She gave him a wink. "Like, maybe to pick up small kettle of hot water and dump it over two falcons."

_'Well, that' s one mystery solved,' _he reflected.

Meanwhile, Shampoo had asked for another batch of cranes. Cologne had somehow shifted the empty crate from the top of the stack to the bottom while neither of them was looking, and now had the new topmost crate open. This time, instead of flinging them all toward Shampoo at once, Cologne sent the birds winging along one at a time, with about five seconds as an interlude between each.

Shampoo's brow furrowed in intense concentration. Ranma watched as the neat line that was the birds' journey was broken, each crane departing in a different direction once it hit a certain point in the air. He watched, bemused, as the cranes settled into a sloppy but still recognizable kanji scrawl for 'Ranma'. "Not bad, not bad at all," he said to her, not even really trying to keep the 'yes, I'm impressed' note out of his tone.

"Although she just spent most of the rest of her reserves in that bit of grandstanding," Cologne added. That little touch had not been something they discussed when planning out Ranma's introductory session. "Still, perhaps it's just as well. There is one other technique Shampoo could have demonstrated for you, but she has only begun to make good progress on it and it is the most energy-intensive one I've taught her yet."

"So what is it, Shampoo?" Ranma asked.

"Name is Wind Ward," she answered. "Build on Wind Strike, except you not control or direct air currents. Is wide-area effect, causes strong, unpredictable gusts of wind that have lots of chi in them. Will mess up almost any long-range attack." It made for a particularly pleasing mental picture, too... Ranma learning this with her help, and utterly defeating Mousse's typical attacks once the half-blind boy finally managed to escape Jusenkyo's grasp and return to Nerima without a curse. It had to happen sooner or later, Shampoo knew, but the later the better. And the farther along she and Ranma were able to get, the closer they were able to come without one of the usual most persistent interferences around to cause trouble, the better.

"How would that stand up to a Moko Takabisha?" Ranma wanted to know.

Cologne answered the question that her youngest descendent didn't have anywhere near enough experience to handle. "At full strength, it would disrupt the blast utterly, and even weaken a typical Perfect Shi Shi Hokodan to near-uselessness."

"Cool," Ranma pronounced. "So that's the stuff Shampoo's been working on so far? How many more techniques are there?"

"Why don't we let that wait for another time," Cologne responded. Then, yielding to the temptation to mess with her son-in-law's head, she added, "I will say that you've seen me use two of them before. See if you can think back over the past during the next few days and figure it out for yourself."

Ranma put on a smirk. "That almost sounds like a challenge, Granny."

Cologne returned a bloodcurdling smile. "You want a challenge, Son-in-law? I challenge you to complete the first step of the training faster than anyone has ever done before." She kept quiet for now that that record had been set by Shampoo, as far as she knew; Cologne's theory that her youngest descendant's cursed form might help her learn the basics had proven correct beyond her wildest dreams. In all likelihood Ranma's own experience with a falcon body would serve him just as well or better, but if Cologne actually told him that Shampoo had been the one to set the record he would probably figure out ahead of time that flight experience was the key. No need to make it even easier on the boy than it already would be.

Yes, even after nearly three centuries she remembered taking two months to master the training that Shampoo had completed in a week and a day. But she wasn't bitter. Not at all.

"How fast is that?" Ranma asked.

"I'll tell you once you've mastered the exercise."

"Great-Grandmother, that not fair."

"Neither is life, Shampoo." Cologne had not yet told Shampoo how extraordinary her time to complete the first step had been. Time enough for that later, after Ranma did even better. The Matriarch judged that it would be better overall for Shampoo to learn that yes, she was second to Ranma in this area, but that was second place out of _all_ Amazons, rather than knowing from the start she held the gold medal and then getting displaced from her throne.

Ranma made a disgruntled sound in the back of his throat. "Well, okay, then what that really boils down to is you're challenging me to do the best I can. You got it, old... girl." He might not be fast enough to stop the Matriarch if she was really determined, but at least he could catch sight of her fingers tightening on the wood of her staff!

"Glad to hear it, Son-in-law." Cologne hopped from the large crate to the topmost smaller one, and flipped the lid of her previous perch. "The gear you will need is in here."

Ranma trotted over, finding that he wasn't really surprised at the sight before him. A coiled-up leather harness with lots of wooden bars, gears, and pulleys rested within, sitting on top of what Ranma would be willing to bet were sacks of balsa wood strips. "So that was what she was doing," he murmured.

"Yes, Ranma have already see Shampoo work on this part of training," the younger Amazon confirmed as she moved up behind him. "The method is called Flight of the Plucked Chicken." She didn't even try to keep a straight face as she said it. It hadn't been particularly amusing while _she_ was struggling with that cursed harness and its accouterments, but now that she had passed that trial and got to watch someone else suffer, Shampoo was able to see the humor.

"The heck?" Ranma said. "How's..." His voice trailed off as he stopped and really thought about it, casting his mind back to what he'd watched Shampoo doing that one time, putting it together with what the Amazons had said was the heart of this style, what the training would teach him to do. "Okay," he said after a minute or two of silent thought. "I think I see where this is going. You put on the harness... and attach the balsa wood strips, or should I say 'feathers'... and jump through the air as hard as you can. The idea is to get where you're going without having the wind rip any of the feathers off the outfit. And the suit's built like it is so that you can rearrange it after each jump, so that you're not just figuring out the one perfect way to twist your body to keep the feathers intact. The only thing that'll work every time is doing what you said—getting your chi to align with the air itself."

"Very well reasoned, sonny boy. You are correct." _'So help me, if he masters this in just three days, I'll... I'll...'_ She didn't quite know what she'd do. Perhaps she would wait until he finally accepted Shampoo as his wife, then slip one of the more powerful Amazon fertility potions into her great-granddaughter's tea. The thought of Ranma dealing with four or five children, each of whom was as gifted—and as much of a handful—as he was... there was quite a bit of satisfaction in that.

* * *

Ranma paused in his roof-hopping and checked the angle of the sun. Yes, he still ought to have time for this visit. He'd just finished with three hours of training, but today was Sunday and Genma's training session with Akane would last at least another two hours. Akane might later hear from Kasumi that he had been gone for such a large stretch of the day and she might ask him where he'd been, but at least he didn't have to worry about her busting in on him when he was talking things over with Ukyo.

Conversation, civil persuasion, and other such social skills were an area Ranma knew full well to be one of his weakest, but even he could see ahead of time that this discussion with Ukyo would be a lot less trouble without Akane present. Personally he would have preferred to let it wait a little longer, think a bit more about what he was going to say, but he supposed Shampoo had had a point twenty minutes ago. Cologne had signaled that it was time for both teens to end their training for the day, Shampoo because her reserves were running on empty, Ranma because he'd worked his way through ninety-five percent of the balsa wood feathers she had prepared. Shampoo had been happy to shift from training to talking with him, and he hadn't exactly minded the segue away from what he had already mentally christened the Flight of the Stupid, Spastic, Crippled, Diseased, Plucked Chicken. Although he hadn't exactly been prepared for Shampoo to ask him whether he'd followed through yet on what he'd said he would do, to ask Ukyo not to use her curse against her again. After he'd admitted he hadn't, she had spent the last of her chi in grabbing a bucket of water from somewhere outside his field of vision and dumping it over the both of them, and had then proceeded to give him an earful once the language barrier was down.

_'But, it could've been worse,' _he allowed generously. '_She could've been screeching stuff at me that wasn't basically right. I knew for a fact that Ucchan didn't understand just why Shampoo did what she did, and I'd figured out myself that she probably wasn't going to take it lying down. I really shouldn't even have put it off this long, to get with her and ask her to call a truce on using people's Falcon curses against them.'_ A vision danced through his head then of how that could apply to someone other than Shampoo, how it already had once at Ucchan's Okonomiyaki. _'She prob'ly wouldn't do that to me, though,' _he thought. _'Not on purpose, anyway.'_ He knew Ukyo cared, in fact he knew she cared deeply enough that he wasn't entirely comfortable thinking about it, but she had never been as ready, open, eager, and, ahem, uninhibited as Shampoo in showing it.

_'At least today Shampoo didn't manage to get the both of us in a skin scene,' _Ranma thought. _'Didn't even try, actually. She was probably just too tired out from practice.'_ It was the fourth time he'd run that thought back through his mind since beginning this journey from Shampoo's restaurant to Ukyo's, and each time he'd felt just a little more uneasy about it. Not because Shampoo had shown that much restraint—but because he didn't feel more than a tiny twinge of relief that she had.

"Am I actually getting used to that kind of stuff?" he wondered, putting words to the thought as he came to a stop. Ucchan's was just four blocks ahead, but he felt like he had better get this resolved, or at least pushed out of his head, before seeing her. "I always hate it when Akane calls me a pervert, but what else would you call someone who's all casual about being around Shampoo when she really gets going like that?" Not a very reassuring thought... and it led straightaway into Ranma deliberately thinking back to some of the times the Amazon had shown just how much she was willing to give to him, with a clarity and focus that he usually used in _suppressing_ such thoughts. "Whoa, okay, guess I don't have to worry about that after all," he muttered as his pulse began to race.

It still left the question of why he wasn't more relieved that today hadn't been a repeat performance. A little more thought suggested an answer. "Guess I'm just getting less scared of that stuff because there's been such a long string of it without Akane finding out and going ballistic. That sure hasn't ever happened before." On the whole, though, he thought it was a change he could get used to. Get even more used to, anyway.

Giving a satisfied nod, and forcing out the lingering image of Shampoo wearing a big smile and nothing else, he resumed his trek toward Ucchan's.

He arrived at a good time, at least for the purpose of private conversation. The lunch rush had ended, and Ucchan's was closed to the general public for the next few hours. As Ranma jumped down into the street and peered through the window, he saw Ukyo give the grill a last loving wipe, then cover it up and toss the rag aside. He took another two steps and knocked on the door.

"Hey, Ranchan!" Ukyo exclaimed a few seconds later, opening the door and giving him a sunny smile. "Come in, come in! Would you like some late lunch?"

Well, if she was offering then there was no way he was going to feel guilty about making her get everything dirtied up again. Especially not with his stomach rumbling its own answer to her offer; breakfast had been a long time ago. "Yeah, that sounds great! Thanks!"

Ukyo fired up the grill, pulled out the various ingredients, and quickly fixed him three of her best. She knew for a fact that a serving of that size would only put a dent in Ranma's appetite, not subdue it entirely, but for what she was about to ask him she didn't want him stuffed to the gills with food. "Ranchan?"

"Mmwhaf?"

The chef giggled at the sight. He didn't scarf her food down nearly as quickly as meals she'd seen him eat in the Tendo home, since of course there were no overweight pandas here to try and steal from his plate, but Ranchan still showed the infamous Saotome Table Etiquette in other ways. "Are you free for about an hour?"

"Yeah, I can manage that," Ranma allowed, hoping that he wasn't setting himself up for trouble. Oh well, if this was a date he could at least count on Ucchan not to make it too frilly and girly, and it should leave her in a good enough mood to go along with what he would be asking her.

"Great!" Ukyo said enthusiastically. "I was gonna go train in the vacant lot a couple of blocks over. It'd be a lot more helpful, and a lot more fun too, if you'd be my sparring partner."

"Uh..." Now he was on the horns of a dilemma. Ranma's brain sped up to maximum as he pondered the choices. On the one hand, it didn't seem like such a good idea to ask her what he was going to while they were already on the battlefield and she had her mega-spatula right there in hand. Also this would be the first time he'd even tried helping Ucchan with her training; there was no inherent reason to think she'd take it as badly as Akane always did, but then again there was no certainty she wouldn't.

Then again, if Ukyo did react badly to his request, it might actually be safer to weather her reaction in the middle of a match. He could just pretend it was a more intense sparring session than expected from his oldest friend, and put all his effort into dodging and blocking until her initial response ran down. He never quite knew how to deal with an incoming angry female under normal circumstances, but surely he could handle himself in the context of a challenge under the Art!

Less than a second had passed as he pondered these options. "Sure, Ucchan. I'll be glad to help you out," Ranma said.

"Thanks, Sugar, I really appreciate it." Ukyo quickly put away the okonomiyaki ingredients, turned off the grill and gave it a hasty rub-down, then grabbed her combat spatula and enough miniatures to fill her bandoleer. The two of them left the restaurant and headed down the street.

"So do you usually train this time on Sundays?" Ranma asked as they reached the first intersection, keeping the conversation to safe topics for now.

"Yes and no," Ukyo replied. "Basically I train when I can, Ranchan. Between going to Furinkan and running my own restaurant, it's pretty much impossible to just find time to train. I have to make it, and even that's hard. Like right now, for instance," she continued. "Frankly, I'd rather be back at the restaurant with you, fixing you more okonomiyaki and talking about life in general and nothing in particular. But this is important too, so I'm just glad you're there to help me out."

"Uh, if you're not really fired up about the idea of training, why're you showing a battle aura?" It was just the barest flicker, but Ranma could still sense it. It had become perceptible during Ukyo's 'this is important too' line.

"Like I said, it's important." Ukyo grimaced, and subconsciously began walking a little faster. "I went head-to-head with Shampoo a little while back, and nearly got the crap beaten out of me for my troubles. Not because she's so much better than me, just because I made one stupid mistake that left me open. Don't want that happening again."

"Whoa. You fought her? You almost got flattened?" Ranma said in his best 'method actor' voice... which is to say, if Ukyo's mind hadn't been focused on the past, she would have sensed immediately that he was faking the queries. "How'd you get out of it?"

The chef wasn't paying enough attention for his tone to register, but she at least caught and comprehended the question. She held silent for the rest of the current block, before admitting, "I used her curse against her. Not something I'm really proud of, and definitely not something I want to have to count on to save my butt."

"Especially when you consider how ticked off it made her."

"No joke..." Ukyo blinked and came to a dead stop, only ten feet away from the entrance to their destination. Ranma kept walking for a few steps before realizing he was leaving her behind. He stopped as well, turned back to face her, and developed a sweatdrop at the look of suspicion on his oldest friend's face. "Ranma honey?" she asked. "That sounded a little funny, somehow. Are you just talking about what she did to get me back? Or is there some _other_ reason you'd know for a fact that Shampoo was really pissed at me?"

_'Oh well, it's not like there was really gonna be a good way to do this.'_ With that cheerful thought for encouragement, Ranma braced himself. "Uh, no. I mean, yeah. I mean... Hey, you said it yourself—you ain't proud of doing this. Gettin' your own curse, just for a little bit, that shows you even more how she felt. How it feels to have someone else snatch away all your strength and skills and even your own human body. So... I guess what I'm trying to say is..."

"Is that Shampoo told you to tell me to back the hell off?" Ukyo demanded, her fists clenched at her sides and her face like a thundercloud.

"Well, yeah... I mean, no..." Ranma experienced a rather curious phenomenon then. One corner of his mind somehow managed to present to his greater consciousness a reasonably clear, impartial view of just how pathetic he must look to an outside observer. Slamming his eyes shut and drawing on every iota of determination he could muster, he declared, "No! That's not how it is at all! I volunteered to do it, that is, to _ask_ you not to use her curse against her again. You've seen the kind of crap those jerks at Furinkan try to pull on me. I can tell you first-hand how Shampoo musta felt when you did that, and it sucks! No way am I just gonna sit still and say it's okay if it's happening to somebody other than me!"

"So you're just gonna take her side then, and dump something on me too? I guess Shampoo's little payback hit harder at the time, but this damn well hurts too, Ranma! And could you please at least _look at me!_"

"No, I can't," Ranma admitted in a tone containing notable self-disgust. "I'll lose every bit of my cool and control if I do. Hell, I can't even handle it when Kodachi starts fake-crying, how am I supposed to deal with my oldest friend gettin' all choked up for real?" He paused, gulped, and continued. "I ain't trying to say you were wrong and Shampoo was right. She made a stupid mistake too. When I talked to her I realized she honestly thought she'd explained to you why she did what she did, she figured you'd understand everything just from that little 'Now you know what it feels like' line you told me an' Akane about.

"But that ain't the whole of it at all, Ucchan. It's like I said already—once you really understand what it's like to lose so much, to have somebody take so much away from you because it makes it easier for them, once you know how it feels... then you won't treat it like it's no big deal anymore. You won't think it's a perfectly good way to win any fight you want," he said quietly. "At least, I hope not. Shampoo said you'd said something like that, but I figure that could've just been another one of those deals where her Japanese didn't quite cut it."

Ukyo had forced herself to listen to all of that, though doing so felt like Shampoo had regained her previous curse and was now trying to claw her way out of the chef's gut. Maybe the things Ranma was saying were justified, but that didn't make it feel any better to hear her fiancé sticking up for the damnable Amazon at Ukyo's own expense.

However, the flipside was also true—the pain she was feeling didn't make Ranma's request any less reasonable and honorable. _'Honorable, hah,' _Ukyo thought bitterly. _'Ranma, sure, but Shampoo? HELL no! But I don't think trying to make him see that right now is gonna work too well. And anyway... anyway, I was feeling guilty about what I did...'_ Such feelings were conspicuous by their absence now, but Ukyo supposed they might well return after the present fire in her belly had had a chance to die down. _'Choose your battles carefully, and you can even turn a loss into something that helps you to ultimate victory... at least, I really hope so...'_

Out loud, the chef sighed then said, "I guess I understand where you're coming from, Ranchan. All right, tell Shampoo she's got a truce, not a water war."

Ranma breathed his own sigh, one longer, louder, deeper, and far more relieved than Ukyo's had been. "Will do. I'll make sure she promises not to use any more of that Instant junk on you as long as you don't nail her first. Sound good?" he asked, daring to open his eyes.

"I'm not quite sure," Ukyo said, her own eyes narrowing. Ranma gulped. "That answer brings me to my next question, Ranchan. Exactly what happened day before yesterday? Is that even when you talked to Shampoo about this, or was it sometime later?"

He frowned in puzzlement. "Yeah, it was then. What'd you think I was doing, when I flew off after hearing everything you said to me an' Akane? Of course I was gonna go confront Shampoo about it!"

"I wasn't sure," Ukyo countered. "But you know, I kind of thought you might not want to go over there all by yourself, _especially_ since you weren't wearing any clothes at the time!" Ranma flinched at the comeback, which wasn't very reassuring. "And maybe you don't realize it, Sugar, but you don't exactly have a great track record in standing up to girls. So no, I wasn't convinced at all that you were going to the Cat Café. I thought you might just be taking some time to fly and think things over, since you've told me how much you like doing that."

"That was part of it," Ranma said quietly. "But you oughta know me better than to think I'd just let something like what you described slide entirely."

"And when did I say that? But for the record, Ranma, I almost think I'd rather you let it slide than deal with it without including me! What I thought... what I _hoped_ that afternoon was that you'd come by my place, turn back to human and grab the change of clothes I'm keeping for you, and then we could go face Shampoo about this together! I waited and waited, didn't even open the shop until the dinner rush was crowding outside my doors staring in with puppy-dog eyes, and I never even saw you!" Ukyo glared furiously at him, her expression almost managing to mask the hints of tears in her eyes. "So you flew directly on to her restaurant instead? I guess you never said it outright, but back when you were asking me about using my place as a safe spot to change back to human, I sure didn't think you'd offered Shampoo the same kind of trust!"

Ranma couldn't find any words to answer that right away. It was true that he hadn't made the same arrangement at the Cat Café that he had with Ukyo and Dr. Tofu, and it was even true that Ukyo's reason had been a big part of why. But hearing it spoken out loud right now somehow felt wrong.

In any case, part of what she'd said was definitely wrong. "So who says I had to change back at all?" he wanted to know.

"What the hell kind of stupid question is that?" Ukyo demanded. "What, you flew around her head in circles screeching in Morse code? You scratched a bunch of kanji onto the wall with your beak?"

"Uh..." _'This would not be a good time to laugh, even if I'd be doing it at my own stupid self.'_ "Did I never mention one particular piece of this curse, Ucchan?" he asked, resisting an urge to put his hand behind his head and give a feeble, shamefaced grin. "It lets me understand Shampoo or Ryoga when we're both in our Falcon forms. That's how come I could fly straight to her place to talk to her about what she'd done. I just had to get her to change too."

Ukyo stared back at him in shock. "You... you can... the curse actually goes that far?"

"Yeah, it even lets her talk normally instead of that whole 'Japanese as a second language' thing."

The chef clenched her eyes shut for a moment, fighting off her initial reaction to this news. _'It's really that much of a connection, that much in common? This crap just keeps getting worse and worse!'_

She took several deep breaths, struggling for composure and courage, then said, "Well, guess that's pretty convenient. So you didn't have to change at all when you went to talk to her about this? It didn't matter at all that Akane had already carried your clothes home?" She paused for a moment, long enough for Ranma to begin looking extremely uncomfortable but not long enough for him to actually figure out how to respond. "Let me ask you something... just how much time have you been spending with Shampoo lately? You sure didn't hesitate to commit to seeing her again after our little talk."

Ranma shrugged. The gesture might have been more convincing if he wasn't sweating like crazy. "Eh, I don't know. Yeah, I guess I have been seeing a lot more of her than usual, ever since we both got the upgrade to our curses. But... I mean... that's only natural, right?"

"Ranchan... far be it from me to sound like Akane..." Ukyo said through gritted teeth, "but do you seriously not see that she's just trying to snag you for herself again?"

He frowned. "I don't know, Ucchan, but I will tell you one thing I haven't seen. I haven't seen her try an' tell me which of my friends I could and could not spend time with." He closed his eyes again, and said, speaking now with more tiredness than determination, "Akane does that a lot. You've seen it yourself, I know, and it just ends up with me going out behind her back. I'm even startin' to be glad that it's easier to do that now... I'd really rather not have things be like that with you, Ucchan..."

"I'm not trying to say what you can and can't do," she replied carefully. "Just wanted you to watch out, that's all. If someone had told you three months ago that Shampoo would dump Instant Drowned Cat Water on someone you knew and cared about, and two days later you wouldn't even be a little mad at her for it, would you have believed them?"

"I..." He gulped. "I don't know..."

"Just think about it, okay?" Ukyo requested. "That's what I'm doing. Just trying to look out for... for the one who matters most to me in this whole crazy town... that's what fiancées and best friends do, isn't it?"

"Yeah, all the time, in a better world than this," Ranma said, his tone taking any sting out of the words. It was clear, both from that tone and from his expression as he opened his eyes once more, that he was feeling quite grateful for her response. Not leaving it to chance, though, he continued, "Thanks, Ucchan."

"You're welcome. But I, I will say that I'd like something a little more for myself," she said, calling on all her courage. "To see you a little more than I get to already, that is. I've been thinking about this for awhile now, Ranchan, and I was wondering... would you like to join the astronomy club with me?"

Ranma blinked, not having expected that. He turned the thought over in his mind a few times. The astronomy club... yeah, that was one of the four whose members were able to skip their last class of the day. It did sound kind of nice. "But can we even join up this late in the game? School started up a long time ago. We may not be halfway through the semester yet, but I'm pretty sure all the clubs stopped takin' applications awhile back."

Ukyo rolled her eyes. "You mean, I was hallucinating? The falconry club _hasn't_ been trying to get you to join?"

"Well, no, not as a student anyway," he pointed out, remembering that he needed to tell Ucchan about the club's latest persuasion tactic but deciding that this probably wasn't the best time.

"Doesn't really affect my point, Sugar." Ukyo closed the distance between them with two quick steps, then bounced the back of her hand off his shirt. The same, absolutely-nothing-to-do-with-regulations shirt that he wore all the time to Furinkan. "You know the normal rules don't apply to people like us. Any club would bend over backwards to get you and me as members. If nothing else, we're insurance against the next time Principal Kuno hatches one of his plans."

"Well, maybe. It wouldn't hurt to try, right?" Ranma said, giving her a grin. "Sure, I'm up for it."

"Great!" Ukyo said, returning his smile. In all honesty, she wasn't sure just how much of a concrete gain this was; she had _already _been spending her last class of the day with Ranma and without Akane there to interfere. But at least the principle involved here—Ranma agreeing to do this because it would let them spend time together—felt very nice.

Of course, that wasn't the only thing he'd agreed today to do with her. Her smile curved just a bit wider and showed a few more teeth as she said, "And now I believe you owe me an hour of sparring practice?"

* * *

Kasumi was mildly surprised when the falcon zipped in through the window, alighted on the counter, and began flapping its wings and cheeping imploringly. "Hello, Ryoga," she said with a smile. "Would you like some hot water?"

The falcon that was Ryoga Hibiki nodded, settling down with what Kasumi thought must be a sigh of relief. She turned to the sink and began running hot water into a pan. "Here you go," she said, putting the water on the floor. Then she blinked, picked it back up and dumped it into the sink. Ryoga let out a squawk of protest. Kasumi gave him a quick, apologetic bow and smile. "Let me bring a towel and bathrobe for you first, all right?" she asked. Ryoga's eyes widened in realization, and Kasumi could almost imagine she saw a hint of red suffusing the darkness of his feathers. "I'll be right back, so please don't go anywhere," she called over her shoulder as she slipped through the doorway.

It took her longer than she'd expected to fetch those items and return, due to the fact that halfway through the process she realized there was something else she really ought to deliver to Ryoga as well. She made a quick side-trip to the room Ranma shared with his father, then headed for the living room where the only other occupant of the home could currently be found. "Hello, Nabiki," she said.

"Hey, Sis." Nabiki looked up from her manga with a mildly inquisitive look. The expression sharpened and became more interested as she noted one particular item her elder sister was carrying. "Isn't that Ranma's last full bar of waterproof soap?"

"Yes. Well, it isn't really Ranma's, remember? He's been waiting until he could give it to Ryoga."

"Well, that's what he _says_, at least," Nabiki murmured. "So what are you doing with it?" She blinked, hearing slight sounds of movement from the kitchen. "Don't tell me—ol' What's-his-name dropped in for one of his fly-by-night visits?"

"Ryoga's in the kitchen, if that's what you mean." A wrinkle of puzzlement creased Kasumi's brow. " 'Ol' What's-his-name'?"

Nabiki shrugged. "It seems appropriate, considering how little time he actually spends around town."

"Well, we shouldn't waste this opportunity to give him his own protective soap," Kasumi said briskly. "Where are the bars you ordered from China?"

"Urglplk!" Nabiki was able to keep her eyes from widening noticeably, and stifle the gurgle before it could escape the back of her throat, but she was still as surprised as she had been in a long time. "Ah... what do you mean, Kasumi?"

The eldest Tendo daughter blinked. "I mean the four bars of waterproof soap Akane paid you to order from the Jusenkyo Products company," she said, clearly puzzled at Nabiki's response. "Two for Ranma and two for Ryoga. They did arrive this morning while I was out shopping, right?"

"Yes, they did," Nabiki said slowly. "While you were out shopping, and Akane was out jogging, and Ranma was soaring in the wild blue yonder, and Daddy was at that town council meeting, and Mr. Saotome was off scrounging up more supplies for Akane's training."

"Oh, that's good!" Kasumi said, relieved at Nabiki's answer and utterly oblivious to the question behind it.

Nabiki started to say something else, then visibly thought better of it. "Okay, I'll go fetch Ryoga's share of the soap. Assuming he hasn't wandered out of the kitchen and into the sunset yet."

Kasumi looked down at the towel and bathrobe in her hands. "Oh my, I hope not."

The Tendo sisters vacated the room, one looking mildly concerned and hopeful, the other doing her best not to register uneasiness. "Ryoga, I'm back," Kasumi said as she stepped through the doorway.

"Thanks, Kasumi, but you really didn't need to go to that much trouble."

The eldest Tendo daughter's eyes widened. Ryoga was standing before her, looking very sheepish. The transformation in and of itself wasn't too surprising, since Kasumi could easily believe that his talons would be able to manipulate the sink handles, but he was also dressed in his trademark yellow shirt, black pants, and black-and-yellow bandana. As the bandana was the only piece of that ensemble he'd had on him when he arrived, Kasumi was understandably confused. "How did you do that, Ryoga?" Smiling as she recovered her equilibrium, she guessed, "Did Shampoo's friend Mousse teach you how to carry around spare clothes and things even when you're a bird?"

"No, I just hid a bunch of changes of clothing in important places," Ryoga said, leaving out exactly how far back he'd done this.

"Hmmm, 'be prepared'. The Boy Scout motto. I never knew you'd joined, Ryoga." This was Nabiki, appearing behind Kasumi. "So how far along in the ranks are you?" She smirked at him. "Eagle Scout? Or maybe something a little humbler, cuter, and more down-to-earth?"

"Whatever," he said. "Um... Kasumi? Is Akane around? I've got some souvenirs I'd like to give her."

"Akane's busy training right now," Nabiki said helpfully, answering before Kasumi could. "You can give them to me and I'll pass them along to her." Or rather, she would evaluate them in case Ryoga had managed to once again get his hands on some exotic goods that were commonplace where he'd picked them up, but very valuable in the local markets. She'd made several hundred thousand yen by acting as the middleman for Ryoga to her little sister, selling the actual items he had intended for Akane and providing her with locally-produced variants that looked nearly identical to what she would have gotten. Nabiki knew there was no chance in the world Ryoga would ever notice the difference, and even if he did it wasn't like he could say anything.

"No, thanks," Ryoga said. "I'd really like to stay and talk to her—if that's all right, I mean." Kasumi gave him a cheerful smile and nod, and Ryoga returned his own grin of thanks. "I'll give them to her myself."

Nabiki gave him a long, measuring look. He didn't seem at all nervous at that prospect, and that was cause for contemplation. Given that in the past she'd seen Ryoga destroy the better part of a load-bearing wall simply by nervous fidgeting while trying to present his latest batch of gifts to Akane, it didn't make much sense now for him to face the prospect entirely free of doubt or anxiety. Unless, of course, he was under one of the random mind-altering effects that popped up every so often in the district.

"I'm sure Akane will appreciate that," Kasumi said. "She'll be glad to see you again."

"I'll be glad to see her," Ryoga replied. "You said she was training? I wonder if she'd like me to help her. Or... is Ranma with her?" His face clouded over as he asked the question, but not to the degree that Nabiki had expected. Her sense of something being out of place ratcheted up another notch.

"No, she's working with Ranma's father lately," Nabiki said. "Mr. Saotome doesn't allow anyone else to watch while he does whatever he's doing with Akane." She speculated idly for a moment, wondering whether she ought to drop a few hints that training might not be the only thing on Genma's mind during these meetings with Akane. Quickly she realized it would be mostly pointless. She could undoubtedly get Ryoga all fired up and send him charging out there to confront Genma, but the old panda would just deny everything and divert Ryoga toward his son, probably managing to stoke the Lost Boy's anger even higher in the process. It would be good for a laugh for her, but it probably wouldn't accomplish anything concrete.

There were better methods at her disposal. "Even Ranma gets shut out, no matter how much he complains about it."

"Good for Akane," Ryoga pronounced. "She's much better off without him. Especially in something like that."

Kasumi blinked. "Why do you say that, Ryoga? Why would Akane be better off with just Mr. Saotome and not Ranma there while she trains?"

"Urk!" Ryoga paled. He hadn't quite thought of it that way. Half a loaf might be better than none, but he wasn't sure the saying applied in this particular situation. Sure, Ranma was a jerk, but where had he learned it from?

"Oh, I don't know, Kasumi," Nabiki said casually, watching Ryoga from the corner of one eye. "Maybe because Ranma always makes fun of our baby sister's skills in the Art, points out how far she has to go, and rubs her face in the fact that, compared to everyone else around here, she's not a real martial artist at all."

"Excuse me, Nabiki," Ryoga said coldly. "Just because she's not as good as Ranma or me doesn't make her not a real martial artist."

"No, but only training when she feels like it, and only feeling like it when someone bruises her pride, does," Nabiki shot back with a smirk.

"What do you know about it, anyway?" Ryoga demanded. "It wasn't that long ago that I helped her train to take down those girls who thought they were your sisters. You weren't there to see her, how much spirit and dedication she had!"

"And you weren't around for the month before those two showed up," Nabiki said in a voice like honey over a razor blade, "when the only 'training' she did was her daily jog. You also weren't around a couple of days after the fight, when I talked to little sister and got the details of just what kind of training you gave her."

"What's that supposed to mean? I gave her just what she needed! She came back just fine to win the rematch!"

Nabiki's eyes flashed. "Ryoga... I suggest you stop being so _pigheaded_ about this." The threat in her tone was unmistakable, at least to someone who knew what the middle Tendo was talking about.

Kasumi, meanwhile, was looking lost and uncertain. She could sense the mood behind the two teenagers' words, but didn't really understand the how or why. Particularly she didn't understand why Nabiki's choice of words in that final sentence should have Ryoga paling and flinching back. "Um... well... Ryoga, here," she interjected, breaking the hard cold silence and handing a small square package to Ryoga. "It's a bar of waterproof soap. Nabiki has two more for you. Ranma wanted you to have half of his stock, so that you could have your own protection."

"Yeah, yeah, here you go Hibiki." Nabiki handed over her two bars as well. _'Feel free to sell them or pitch them once you don't need them any more. At the very least don't just give them back to Ranma.'_

"He... he did? Wait a minute, did Akane ask him to?"

"Yes, that's right," Kasumi said. "They were both thinking of you."

_'Yeah, right,_' Ryoga thought. _'I guess the price of being as nice as Kasumi is that you don't see the world how it really is. No way Ranma would have done this for me without Akane saying anything. At least not when he had already got Shampoo to get a real cure shipped here for me...'_ Blinking in sudden alarm, Ryoga realized that although Ranma had told him he would make the request, he hadn't seen or heard from his rival since then. For all he knew, it might have proved impossible for some reason or another and these bars of soap were Ranma's apology for not being able to finally free him from Jusenkyo's embrace. "What about the Nannichuan?" he asked desperately.

"Should get here in another couple of weeks," Nabiki drawled. "Ranma said he figured even a klutz like you could keep protected between now and then with this much soap."

"Oh he did, did he?" Ryoga growled.

"And I hope you appreciate how much trouble he's had to go to, to do this for you," the middle Tendo continued. "Whatever Shampoo wanted from him in return for doing this, it's got to be big. He hasn't even had the guts yet to tell us what it is."

Kasumi spoke up before Ryoga could. "But, Nabiki... that isn't right. She hasn't asked anything from him."

"Oh, please, Sis. You don't honestly believe that, do you?" Nabiki rolled her eyes. "I suppose it's just a coincidence how much time he spends away from home these days, and how the Cat Café is only taking delivery orders anymore."

"So that jerk is only getting worse as time goes by, huh?" Ryoga growled. "Akane would be better off if she'd never met him. She'd be better off if he'd never been born!"

Nabiki gave him a hooded stare. "I suppose you could suggest someone to take her current fiancé's place, hmmm?"

He shook his head, not quite angry enough to miss the implication. "Forget replacing him. She'd be better off without anyone in his place at all. She doesn't need someone so much better than her that he thinks her skills are worthless, someone with so many bimbos after him that he doesn't recognize a real treasure because it doesn't fall all over him. She sure doesn't need idiots like Ranma's dad or yours trying to pick out someone for her to spend the rest of her life with."

Kasumi frowned unhappily. "Ryoga, that's... not very nice."

He started stonily back at her, a little too focused on Akane and her situation to realize just how bad it would be to hurt her sweet, gentle sister. "It's still true."

The eldest Tendo drew back, but didn't have time to give any other reaction. Nabiki's hand was already on her arm, in a gentle but firm grip. "Hey, Kasumi, don't you have some laundry to sort up in your room?" she asked lightly. "Some dusting to do?" She winked. "Or maybe that romance novel and box of chocolate covered cherries I picked up for you yesterday?"

"I... yes, Nabiki, I think that might be a good idea. It's still a while before I need to start work on supper." Kasumi slipped away from Ryoga and out of the kitchen, not exactly hurrying, but certainly not dawdling either.

Ryoga started to follow at least as far as the back porch, meaning to wait there for Akane, but Nabiki took hold of him with the hand that hadn't given Kasumi gentle encouragement a moment ago. Her older sister was no longer present, Ranma was off heaven-knew-where, and most importantly of all Akane was in the dojo with Soun and Genma. She wasn't about to waste this opportunity. "You're not going anywhere, P-chan," she hissed, a venomous sound that easily cut through Ryoga's smoldering anger at the unfairnesses in Akane's life.

"Is there something you wanted to say?" Ryoga growled in return a few seconds later, once he was sure Kasumi was out of earshot. "And don't call me P-chan!"

"I'll call you what I please," Nabiki said coldly. "P-chan, opportunist, liar... this is the first time we've talked since you dropped by and showed us your new curse, isn't it? I'll admit I was impressed at the time. That explanation you gave Akane for why Ranma and Shampoo would give you a Falcon curse too... why, I couldn't have come up with something better myself! How's that feel, Ryoga-baby?" she asked sweetly. "Even a 'heartless, honorless, ice-cold bitch' like me was impressed by your performance!"

Ryoga jerked his arm free from her grasp, though he retained enough presence of mind not to use anything like full strength. "Don't bother to throw that in my face, Nabiki," he advised. "Ranma already beat you to it, and he did a better job than you managed. Don't know who you're trying to hurt by dredging that little phrase up, either. I think it was a great way for me to describe someone who'd take money in exchange for keeping quiet about who and what her little sister's pet really was." In fact, with what Ranma had forced him to face about how bad his actions had really been, he now wished he could think of stronger words than those. _'Maybe some kind of Yakuza reference? No, she'd probably take it as a compliment.'_

"You seem to be forgetting the nonmonetary part of the transaction," Nabiki spat. "Freudian slip, maybe? I'll refresh your memory. As long as you didn't do anything to Akane and she didn't find out the truth, you weren't actually hurting her. I could let my silence be for sale as long as that was true. But I meant every word I said when I warned you what would happen if you really did hurt Akane, or _any_ of my family, Ryoga baby. You may not have the Pig curse any more, but it wouldn't be all that hard for me to get my hands on some Instant powder. I can still take 'P-chan' to a shelter and have him fixed. Or put down."

"Are you finished?" Ryoga demanded bitterly. "I didn't forget any of it. And you don't need to threaten me to keep me from hurting Akane."

Nabiki gave an exclamation of disgust. "Bullshit. You've been trying to do it since day one, and the only thing that's saved you is that you haven't managed it yet. In fact, more often than not you've helped when you were trying to hurt."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about Ranma Saotome." Nabiki gave him her coldest, most sardonic grin. "I have no idea how many times you proclaimed he wasn't good enough for her. Akane was always too clueless to catch it, but of course each time there was the implication that you would be a much better choice. The fact of the matter is, if I'd ever thought you had a chance to shove him out from between you and Akane, I'd have taken you out of the picture first."

"I'd be a dozen times better choice for her than Ranma is," Ryoga said in a voice thick with fury. "I'm not trying for that anymore, I know I'm not good enough for her. But that doesn't make him somehow better!"

"Get real, or get a surgeon to work on your eyes," Nabiki advised. "If it weren't for Ranma, this family would have been torn apart a long time ago. At least five things crash-landed on us in the past year that had nothing to do with him, and that we simply could not have survived without his help." Even her skills had their limits, most particularly that she needed time to develop and execute a plan, and all too often the kind of menaces that had now become part of their lives attacked swiftly and without advance warning. It galled her to the very bone to know that the only control she could exert over such situations was keeping Ranma in place as insurance. Watching her little sister continue to ignore the lessons she should have learned wasn't exactly pleasant either. "And you want to kick him out for daring to mouth off to Akane from time to time?"

"Is that what you call it?" Ryoga said, anger now vying with weariness. "You're the one fooling yourself, Nabiki. Or trying to fool me, anyway. You talk like you actually care about Akane, about your family, but all I see is you worrying that things won't go exactly the way you want them to. Akane, your father, Kasumi... well, _maybe_ not Kasumi... they're just pieces on the board to you. Having Ranma around to exploit is all you care about. It doesn't matter at all how he hurts her."

"He treats the brat better than she deserves, most of the time," Nabiki stated in her most matter-of-fact tone of voice. Despite the charge Ryoga had just leveled against her, this still managed to send him stumbling a step backward in shock. "And I don't suppose there's a snowball's chance in hell you'll really understand what I mean when I say that."

"I'd guess it means you want this conversation to be over," Ryoga said tightly. "Because I'm sure not going to stick around and—"

The resounding **crack **of Nabiki's slap cut him off. The gesture had been every bit as controlled as her previous words, designed to silence Ryoga and get his attention rather than physically hurt him (which Nabiki was fairly sure she couldn't have done anyway). "It means that I actually understand what my precious little princess of a sister really needs," she spat. "She needs someone as strong and skilled and dependable as Ranma to pull her out when she gets in over her head. She needs someone as clueless about girls as Ranma, because she sucks at all things feminine and can't even admit there's a problem. She needs someone to knock her off her high horse now, while he's there to catch her, because the world for DAMN sure doesn't care about Akane Tendo's delusions of adequacy!"

"Dammit, Nabiki, I don't want to listen to this!" Ryoga barely held back from yelling the words loud enough to reach all the way to the dojo.

"Of course not, you're part of the problem. For example, you chow down on the culinary catastrophes she calls food, and tell her it's great. Tell me, Ryoga, exactly _how_ is that going to help her get better? Or do you think it'll really be okay for her to someday feed glop like that to children?"

"Um... I... she won't..." He couldn't manage a better reply than that.

"Or how about her martial arts skills, since you seem to think it's such a crime for Ranma to criticize them? Enlighten me, oh wise one, just what would happen if Akane were to get in a serious fight with Shampoo—especially if our favorite Amazon knew about it ahead of time and prepared with her own waterproof soap?"

"Shampoo wouldn't even be here if it weren't for Ranma!"

Nabiki just shook her head. "Pathetic. Okay, I'll humor you. Forget the soap and replace 'Shampoo' with 'Kodachi'." It was one of the few areas where Nabiki wholeheartedly agreed with her father. Like Soun, she wasn't terribly concerned about the idea of Akane in general challenge matches. Like Soun, she absolutely did not want to see the Black Rose fight her sister when Kodachi was out for blood. "In case you've forgotten, when Miss Kuno first came into our lives it had nothing to do with Ranma."

"She... she could..." Ryoga did his best to shake away memories of the long-ago match between Kodachi and Ranma-chan. "If it were a serious fight and Akane didn't have to use gymnastics tools, she could win. As strong as she is, all it would take is one hit!"

"I believe it wouldn't take more than one hit from Kodachi either, for reasons that have nothing to do with brute strength," Nabiki returned. "Ryoga, for Akane's sake, please pinch yourself and wake up from this dreamworld. She's _not _good enough. She _does _need to grow up. The things Ranma says to her are totally justified more often than not, and if I thought it would really get through to her, I'd arrange for him to be even harsher and more critical." A vicious frown splitting her face, she added, "And the _last _thing my little sister needs is for so-called friends to feed her delusions instead of helping wean her off of them!"

"What she really needs is for people to believe in her," he fired back. "If you think Ranma is such a great asset, why don't you marry him instead of sticking it to Akane?"

"You aren't listening to a word I'm saying, are you," Nabiki accused. "Guess I'm wasting my breath. But I will say this, Hibiki. I spent a lot of time talking to little sister after that business with Natsume and Kurumi. I got her to describe just what kind of training you had been doing with her." Her eyes narrowed. "You didn't hit back. You didn't do any work on her evasion. All you did was help her recover her conditioning, get back what she'd lost during that month little Miss 'I'm a martial artist too!' spent without training at all. And don't think I missed the way you were talking earlier, about Akane winning the rematch. I was there, and I'll tell you to your face that it was Ranma who won it. Akane was just along for the ride."

"I don't have to listen to this," Ryoga snarled. "Akane deserves a better fiancé than Ranma, she deserves a better friend than me, and she sure as hell deserves a better sister than you!"

Nabiki barked a quick, bitter laugh. "She's got one, remember? Kasumi? Closest thing to an angel on earth, and you were about this close to really hurting her with what you were saying. Did you even stop to wonder why we were having this conversation, Ryoga baby?" Although Nabiki was honest enough to admit to herself that it wasn't just sisterly outrage; there was another, more important reason as well. Shampoo had never been anywhere near as threatening as she was nowadays, and the middle Tendo just was no longer certain she could afford to ignore Ryoga's fumbling, previously-ineffective attempts to alter the status quo.

"That, that isn't what I meant!" he protested.

"I don't give a damn what you meant, as if you even know yourself." Nabiki stepped forward, getting right in his personal space, and growled, "I suggest you go right on thinking of me as a 'heartless, honorless, ice-cold bitch'. Because you're right about at least part of it—I don't care about you, or Ranma, or his father, or any of his would-be harem, except for what you can do for me and my family. And what I have to make sure you don't do. You might get off on thinking you're some kind of knight in shining armor for Akane, but I assure you, Ryoga, if you screw things up for me or mine, I will leave you wishing you had never been _born_."

Ryoga stood in relative silence for a few moments, broken only by his labored breathing. "That's a really great attitude, Nabiki," he eventually said, biting the words off. "I hope someday you meet someone else who thinks like that."

* * *

Author's notes

Based on the prereader feedback, there are two issues that I'd like to elaborate on here. The first is Akane and my treatment of her, specifically the way I have Nabiki speaking and thinking about her in this chapter. This was something that was very hard to bring off; it was necessary for how I want to depict Nabiki in this fanfic, but at the same time I don't want the readers thinking I put that in to have her speak with my voice as she derides her sister.

If I wanted to choose one of the characters as my direct mouthpiece, you'd better believe I'd pick someone better than this story's Nabiki Tendo.

So why are those parts in there? Like I already indicated, it is primarily for the readers to get a better idea of the character of _Nabiki_, not Akane—because at the end of the day no one character has got a monopoly on the truth or sees everything with perfect clarity. There is justice to some of what Nabiki says, but it is for each reader to decide for himself where the line falls between 'Nabiki is right about this' and 'Nabiki is wrong about that'; the real value of these scenes is insight into the middle Tendo. Or at least that's what I wrote them for, anyway.

The second issue is Ranma's willingness to accept Shampoo dishing out a temporary Jusenkyo curse. Some readers probably feel he should have been harsher, more critical, more angry at Shampoo for what she did, and certainly not keeping quiet when she stated she was fully prepared and ready to give Akane her own one-shot transformation if the youngest Tendo ever again uses her curse against her.

This, however, is not how I see Ranma Saotome in general, and certainly not in this story. For the first time now he has experience with bearing a nonhuman curse and has had people see it as just another opening to exploit. This has not made him regret taking his Falcon curse, but it has been very frustrating nonetheless. I cannot but think that his sympathies would rest with Shampoo once he got all the information, because _she_ is the one who is vulnerable to this tactic anytime, anyplace. A plan that didn't harm Ukyo, that did teach the chef to really understand how it felt when someone pulled something like this on you, something that could make Ukyo choose to hold back out of empathy or morality rather than just fear of retaliation... like I already said, I just don't see it as bothering Ranma too much.

One last thing on this: in the original series, Ranma himself has never deliberately used people's curses against them to win a fight (or at least, I couldn't remember any examples and neither could my prereaders). However, he has shown himself to be willing to trigger someone's curse under other circumstances (twice with Ryoga that I can recall, and of course there's the times Genma is giving a speech that Ranma doesn't want to listen to). It seems to me that the best, most consistent explanation here is that he considers winning a battle with a trick like that to be too far beyond the pale, too low-down and dirty to qualify as victory at all. Because he never even considered using it to take down Ryoga in either the Breaking Point or the Shi Shi Hokodan arcs, despite how much was at stake.

Thanks to Ed Simons, Nemesis Zero, and Beer-Monster for prereading. Thanks to Judah for permission to use the 'Buzzing Fist' technique from his story Right Moments (although I just kept the name and completely changed the nature of the move). Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed the chapter.


	6. Interlude The Calm Before

Dream of the Earthbound

A Ranma ½ fanfic by Aondehafka

Disclaimer: the Ranmaverse characters owned by Rumiko Takahashi, and all that obligatory stuff. This story based on the anime, not the manga.

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Chapter 6: Interlude – The Calm Before...

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He walked along in the gentle glow of the afternoon sun, enjoying the calm weather, the uncrowded streets, and the pleasant ache of recent exertion. Ucchan had really given it her all in their sparring session, resulting in a very good workout indeed. _'Kinda made for a nice change after all that time in the harness,'_ he thought, grimacing at the memory of the frustrating initial Air style exercise. _'Sometimes seems like the more powerful the lesson you're learning, the less fun the training is. But of course, it also means there's more satisfaction at the end when you've accomplished something that big.'_

The sparring he'd recently finished with Ukyo had been fun, but the only thing he'd actually learned from it was that his oldest friend had come up with a killer new recipe for gunpowder and black pepper okonomiyaki. She'd caught him utterly by surprise with the attack and reduced him to coughing, sputtering tears. _'Man, I'm glad she took it as well as she did, when I talked to her about Shampoo. If she really had been as ticked as I thought she might be, she could've squashed me flat right then. But all she did was back off and brag a bit.'_ He'd take hearing Ukyo crow with triumph any day, at least if the alternative was her patented spatula slam.

_'Not that Ucchan would hold back like that in a real fight, of course,'_ he mused. She hadn't come right out and said it, back when he'd first showed up at her place and she'd asked him to train with her, but Ranma was nearly certain that his oldest friend was thinking about getting some payback for the Instant Maoniichuan. He wasn't sure what he thought about that. In all honesty part of him wanted to just ignore the question and enjoy the calm, peaceful moment free of troubling thoughts.

On the other hand, that part of his psyche had done him precious little long-term good. With a mental grimace, Ranma opted to ignore its advice this time. _'Should I worry about it at all? It ain't like Ucchan and Shampoo haven't had plenty of scuffles before. Nothing ever really comes of it,'_ he thought. _'Sure, things might've changed a little recently, but that don't seem like such a big deal. Ukyo used Shampoo's curse against her when she never has before, and Shampoo paid her back by doing something she hasn't either. Ucchan told me she won't do that any more, and Shampoo said she'll only use the Instant water as payback for people who splash her first. That pretty much puts things back like they were, right? So is there any reason for me to care if they have another fight down the road?'_

When he phrased the question like that, it became a little easier to see what had been nagging at the back of his mind. _'Then again, guess I really shouldn't say it'll be just like it was before. Ucchan always put up a pretty good fight in the past, at least the times I was there to watch.'_ He considered that thought for a minute, then amended, _'Well, out of the times they didn't lose their tempers, forget about their training and discipline, and get into a straight-out catfight.'_

However, unless he was radically mistaken, those days were drawing swiftly to a close. Ukyo hadn't exactly slacked off since coming to Nerima; her skills were better now than they had been then, and in its own way, this might be more impressive than anything Shampoo had done. The chef didn't have anyone to guide her training and also had the fiercest demands on her time out of all his circle of friends and rivals. Taken in that sense, Ukyo might already have achieved more than Shampoo would for years to come.

_'And all of that's well and good,'_ he thought, _'but how much comfort is it gonna be to Ucchan if she tries to go up against Shampoo in another month or so and gets squashed by the Air style?'_ The playing field wasn't terribly uneven yet; Shampoo definitely had a few new tricks up her sleeve, but at her present level of mastery use of them drained her reserves very quickly indeed. Heck, if she tried to use them too exclusively in a fight, Ranma would place his money on Ukyo emerging the victor rather than the Amazon.

From what Shampoo and Cologne had said, though, that wouldn't be true for much longer. Another couple of weeks' work would likely see Shampoo able to use the lowest-level techniques with impunity. Ranma didn't know for sure, but he suspected that by that time Cologne would also have taught her at least one newer and stronger move. In another month, she could probably take Ukyo as easily as Ucchan could handle Akane.

_'Wonder how Ucchan's gonna take that when it happens,' _Ranma mused. _'I know how ticked off Ryoga was, when I first mastered the Chestnut Fist and outclassed him so bad.' _Mad enough to try to use the Breaking Point against him without knowing it only worked on stone. He didn't think Ukyo would react anywhere near that badly, but the fact remained that she surely wouldn't like it much when Shampoo took uncontestable first place. _'Guess we'll just have to see how she deals with it and whether Shampoo grinds her face into the dirt with it,'_ he thought. He didn't think the Amazon would go that far, but she might not have to. Even if Shampoo didn't flaunt her new level of mastery at all, he doubted Ukyo would be too happy about never again being able to face her on equal footing.

_'Not like there's much I could do about that, though,'_ he thought uncomfortably. _'Hmm... it'd be funny if somebody randomly turned up who could teach her the Water style, assuming there is such a thing. After all, she spent so much time battling it out against the waves of the ocean. Ucchan with water, me an' Shampoo with air, Ryoga's got earth nailed down pretty good... heh, guess that leaves fire for Akane.'_

After spending a few moments thinking about that, and having his amusement turn to trepidation at the thought of an Akane who could back up her strikes with angry burning chi, Ranma pushed those thoughts away. He had more immediate things to focus on. The Tendo dojo was just a block away now, and there was an important conversation not to put off any longer. Akane's training session with Genma probably hadn't ended yet, but once it did he needed to have the same talk with her that he'd had with Ukyo. _'I should be so lucky that it'll go as well this time as it did with her,'_ he thought. _'Still, Akane oughta be wiped out after training this long. I don't know what Pop's got her doing, but whatever it is it sure pushes her to her limits. Maybe she'll be tired enough to actually stop and think instead of just losing her temper.'_ If there was anything he could say, any way to soften the blow of explaining that he'd talked to Shampoo, accepted why she did what she did, and agreed that Ukyo and Akane needed to hold back from their own water attacks, Ranma doubted he would see it in time to do any good.

Nonetheless, he spent the remaining time walking slowly and contemplating, hoping for an inspiration. As he passed through the gate and into the Tendo yard, he found at least a measure of success. _'You know, I bet it would be a good idea to leave out the part Shampoo told me about Akane already trying to use her new curse against her. The whole point here is to get Akane not to do that from now on. Throwing it in her face that she already tried once and failed... that won't accomplish anything except making her feel bad. No, I'll just keep quiet on that detail unless she says something to change my mind.' _He couldn't think of what she might say to do that, but the year he'd lived in Nerima had taught him to expect the unexpected from girls.

"Well, well, Ranma. I was beginning to wonder when you'd wing your way back." This was Nabiki, who had just appeared in the doorway as if to greet him. _'It's already been a good forty-five minutes since I tricked Ryoga into charging away into the sunset.'_

"You were?" Ranma asked. "I've only been gone about four and a half hours, Nabiki. You've seen me take longer than that when I go out to... fly..." He paled and twitched, realizing suddenly that he'd forgotten something rather important. That had indeed been his cover story for the afternoon—that he was leaving for some flying time. How to explain his return now, in human form and fully clothed, when he'd left home in neither condition? _'Maybe she won't notice?... Who the heck do I think I'm kidding?'_

_'Good, he's off-balance,'_ Nabiki thought. This would be a perfect opportunity for her to push a little, completely destroy the feeble remnants of his poise, and drag from him the truth of his whereabouts for the afternoon... except for the fact that she already knew he'd cut his flight short to visit Ukyo. A week ago she'd spread the word among the students who were deepest in debt to her, that if anyone saw Ranma spending time with Shampoo or Ukyo when Nabiki herself didn't know about it, they would receive a five percent reduction on their outstanding balance. She'd gotten a phone call fifty minutes ago from one of her minions, reporting that Ranma was roughhousing with Ukyo in a vacant lot.

Under more pleasant circumstances this would be a great chance to get him to blurt out everything, then purchase her silence. However, as things stood now that would be a mistake. There was more important information to drag out of him while his defenses were down. "That's true," she said. "But never on a day like today, when you already got out on both the previous days for your little romps through the clouds."

"Huh?" he said feebly, more confused than ever. Both days? He quickly ran the events of Friday and Saturday back through his mind. "What're you talking about, Nabiki? Yesterday, sure, but I didn't do that at all on Friday." Just as importantly, he hadn't led the Tendos to believe that was what he was doing and then proceeded to take care of other business.

"You didn't?" she repeated, giving him a stare that made the back of his neck prickle. "I know it wasn't for very long, Ranma, but surely you haven't forgotten already? You ditched Ukyo and my sister on the way home from school, didn't even wait to get home to change and kiss the sky." Her tone sharpening ever so slightly, she continued, "Now that I think about it, though, I do seem to recall Akane saying something about how you weren't flying so much as heading straight to the Cat Café to spend time with Shampoo."

Ranma snorted, forcibly pushing aside his uneasiness. He didn't have anything to be ashamed of, and the only thing he had to hide from that day had nothing to do with why he'd originally gone to the Amazon stronghold. "Well, that's actually pretty close to what did happen, Nabiki. If by 'spend time' you mean 'ask her why she did that to Ucchan, and find out it was cause she'd already used Shampoo's new curse against her in a fight.' It ain't like I'm trying to keep that a secret from Akane or nothing, she just didn't ask me."

"And what would you have said if she did?" Nabiki wanted to know.

Ranma blinked. "Um, I just told you that."

"Why don't we see if we can dig a little deeper here," the middle Tendo suggested. "Shampoo used Instant Jusenkyo water on Ukyo, striking out of ambush without any warning at all, because Miss Kuonji grabbed for an advantage during one of their fights. Am I right so far?"

"Um... well..."

"Not only did she do that, she picked the absolute worst curse imaginable," Nabiki continued. "No danger of Ukyo not understanding the lesson our favorite Amazon was trying to teach."

"Nope, that ain't true at all." Ranma took a deep breath, focusing on the conversation as if it were the kind of battle he knew how to fight. _'Think strategy, think sacrificing stuff you don't need, think preemptive strikes.'_ "From what she said, she _thought_ that's how it was, but Shampoo really didn't get her point across like she meant to."

Nabiki raised one eyebrow. "From what Akane told me, Ukyo was panicking, desperate, just about on the edge of a breakdown. How much farther did Shampoo mean to go than that?"

"She wasn't tryin' to crush her, she just wanted to teach her a lesson!" Ranma snapped back. "Teach her how it feels when someone takes advantage of your Jusenkyo curse like that. And yeah, she screwed up by not explaining it anywhere near good enough, which is why she asked me to talk to Ucchan and tell her that's how it really is!" He hesitated just one moment longer, then made his decision. Surely it was better to confront a potential problem than hope it never turned into a real one. "That's why I cut my flying time short today. Went by Ucchan's to talk to her about that. To tell her why Shampoo did what she did, an' that she won't do it again if Ukyo doesn't try an' hit her in her own weak spot first."

"I'm sure she just loved that," Nabiki murmured, concealing her disquiet at Ranma actually volunteering information he should have wanted to keep hidden. "It must have been a great follow-up to Friday, to have her fiancé come by and take Shampoo's side over hers."

"Look, I ain't taking sides here at all! I'm trying to make sure they both understand what's really happening, and I'm hoping that they can work it out on their own once they do. It's not like Ukyo or Akane could know what it's like to have a curse, not without something like this. It's really about the least painful way they could find out for themselves, if you stop and think about it."

Nabiki's gaze was flat and stony as she replied, "So not only did she resort to that, she fully intends to do it again. Not only did she drop that bomb on Ukyo, she has every intention of including my sister in the fun as well. And you're just going to stand back, shake your head, and say 'Not gonna get involved', Saotome? Your father would be proud."

"Well, I don't think anybody would be proud of me if I just went blindly along with what somebody else told me to do!" he snarled back at her, a little too angry now to be cautious. "Happy, sure, I know there's loads of people who'd cheer themselves hoarse if I just knuckled under to whatever it is they want. Well, that may have happened sometimes, but it damn well isn't again!"

"And yet you say no word of protest when Shampoo proposes to punish the members of her competition by changing them into the stuff of your worst nightmares. Hey, do you think she's already planned out the eight times she's got coming, to balance out the times Akane used her old curse against her? The times she's never said a word of protest for?"

"It was more than eight times," Ranma stated flatly. "And no. I thought I already said that Shampoo asked me to make sure they know this is what's gonna happen from now on, if they go for the cheap win against her."

"And here I thought you took that stuff seriously, those things you martial artists always spout about protecting people from things they can't protect themselves from," Nabiki observed coolly. "Pray tell, how could Ukyo have defended herself from this? What could my little sister do?"

He just stared at her, anger subsiding in the face of lack of understanding. "Are you even listening to me, Nabiki? What kinda sense is that supposed to make? Yeah, Ukyo wasn't exactly able to stop Shampoo on Friday, but it's not like I could've made any kind of difference then. Whaddaya think I'm doing now if not what I can to keep it from happening again? In case you didn't realize it, it wasn't easy to have that talk with Ucchan, and if you think it won't be worse than that with Akane then you're _really_ losing your touch!"

With a great deal of effort Nabiki maintained her control in the face of this. She couldn't decide which was worse—Ranma's attitude, or the fact that he hadn't made even one unthinking response to her attempts to push his hot-buttons. She didn't allow any of her true feelings or thoughts to show as she replied, "Well, Saotome, if you're that concerned about doing a good job of it, perhaps you ought to subcontract out?"

"Huh?"

"I mean, I certainly don't want my little sister getting a close encounter with the Maoniichuan, even if it is the Instant type. And while I'm sure you could tell her what you told me and even convince her," she said this in a tone that indicated she was anything _but_ sure, "it would probably go a lot smoother if you passed the message on to me and let me make the final delivery. How about it? I'll even slash my usual fee down to a paltry two thousand yen."

"W- would you!... Wait." He stared back at her for what felt like a long time, seeming to debate something. Nabiki could tell that he was trying to decide whether to take her up on her offer, but she couldn't understand why, couldn't see any reason for him to hesitate like that. This didn't do much to help her mood.

In point of fact, Ranma was weighing the need to get Akane to see reason (which he was all but certain Nabiki could accomplish better than he could) against the fact that he'd committed himself to being the one to do it. Would it be right to pass the task off to Nabiki? Or would that be running from a hard thing that needed doing?

"Lemme think about, Nabiki," he eventually said, pushing past the highly dissatisfied Tendo daughter and disappearing into the house.

Nabiki remained where she'd been for several moments longer, seething in silence and secret. '_Damn it, I really don't like the direction things have been taking lately...'_ She had already committed not to set Akane directly against the Amazons, determined that doing so simply wasn't safe. Now Ranma was breaking away from his old patterns, the ones that had been so helpful for so long? _'Okay, Nabiki, just get some space, let him have his head for a day or a week or whatever. If he's not going to listen to me—or even worse, if he's going to listen close enough not to be hoodwinked by the usual BS—then I'll just have to work through other people. At least for now,'_ she thought darkly. _'But that's not how it's going to be forever, Ranma. Let's see how confident you are after I get something huge to blow up in your face.'_

* * *

Ryoga stared forward over the smooth, unbroken, pristine soil of the lot. The terrain showed none of the common signs of his training, no craters from the Breaking Point, no half-submerged objects from the Graveyard Shift. Certainly none of the massive blasted excavations caused by the Chain of Despair combo. "Would you be proud, Akane?" he murmured. "I haven't used the Shi Shi Hokodan at all since we talked. I'm not sure it's helping me feel better, at least, not that part. But knowing you care so much—that does help. I promise, I won't fail you again."

With a deep breath and a frown of concentration, he dropped once more to his knees and braced his palms against the ground. For a long moment, nothing discernable happened. Then, with a grumble and a growl, the earth shuddered, convulsed, and disgorged a large, ragged chunk of concrete. Ryoga stayed where he was for another minute, recovering from the exertion of this twist on the Graveyard Shift. Making the ground swallow that thing whole had been easy enough. Operating the technique in reverse... well, he didn't think he'd have it ready to unleash in a match any time soon.

Especially not with what he could see of his target even at this distance. Ryoga stood and walked over to the chunk of cement, taking in all the details that hadn't been discernable from far away. The black coating he'd applied to the entire surface of the object was still the predominant color, but there were numerous areas of bright gray showing, some in huge patches, others in scratches or streaks. Each one of those places represented damage done to the concrete from the disgorgement technique, an overall level of damage that would translate to critical injury if this were used against a person. Ryoga snorted and shook his head. "If I wanted _that_, I'd just use the original like it was designed for." And he certainly wouldn't be using this variant to give himself unlimited passage through the earth anytime soon. His overall toughness might protect him, but he had no intention of popping out of the earth without his pants in the middle of a challenge match.

The Lost Boy let out a sigh. He could see lots of possibilities for this variation, but so far all the good ones required a level of control that remained very far off. It didn't help that this training seemed to exhaust him more quickly than anything he'd done in years. Ryoga wasn't used to limiting his training to less than three hours a day. Heck, he hadn't caved like that during either the Shi Shi Hokodan or the Bakkusai Tenketsu regimens, no matter how much suffering either had entailed.

Those memories, particularly the second set, led his thoughts circling back to something he'd been trying to avoid. Ryoga shook his head, pulled out his black permanent marker, and began coloring over the fresh gouges on his target. Better to focus on what was before him right now, rather than brood about Amazons and their threats against Akane. He couldn't do anything about that right now, so he needed to focus on what he could do. He needed to train, train hard and improve himself and reach true mastery and understanding of these principles as quickly as possible. It was still a long ways down the road, but the ultimate goal he'd set his sights on deserved every ounce of effort he could put toward it.

With the concrete once again completely blacked out, Ryoga retreated half the length of the vacant lot and concentrated again. By now it was becoming a strain even to make the ground perform the initial, unaltered Graveyard Shift. Then again, perhaps having less energy could work in his favor. Perhaps it would be easier to reach the level of control he needed when he wasn't working with his full strength. Once the rock was completely submerged to the six inches he'd chosen for a target depth and the ground was once more smooth and unblemished, Ryoga took a moment to rest. He didn't let his concentration falter, but for the moment he wasn't expending any of his flagging reserves.

"I suggest you leave it there, boy."

The unexpected voice, as dry as the air of a long-sealed tomb and about as welcome, shattered Ryoga's focus. He lurched to his feet and spun around, gaping in dismay at the sight before him. Less than ten feet away, standing—at least, he guessed she was standing—on the boundary wall of the lot was Cologne. Blast it all, he thought he'd be safe here from any prying eyes that knew him and would report his progress back to Ranma! "Old woman, what are you doing in Osaka!"

Cologne didn't bother to roll her eyes, chuckle, sigh, or in any other way make light of the usual confusion. "This is Nerima, boy. What's your third mistake?"

"What? My third...?" Ryoga let the question trail away into meaninglessness. No doubt she was just trying to mess with his head. "Never mind your questions, I've got one of my own! Is it true that you and Shampoo had some kind of potion delivered out here from China, that'll turn Akane or Ukyo into cats just like a one-use Jusenkyo curse!"

"It's a powder, not a potion; a one-use curse is exactly what it is; my great-granddaughter did it without consulting me; she intends to use the Instant Sloth variety on Akane rather than Instant Cat; she will only go to such a length if it proves necessary; and she chose this as a deterrent from either of them using her own curse against her. Ukyo Kuonji resorted to that tactic in a battle with my Shampoo, and received her repayment four days ago. Akane Tendo has not yet done so, at least not since Shampoo exchanged curses, and therefore remains unchanged."

Ryoga's hands clenched into fists. His teeth glinted in the morning sunlight as he snarled, "You tell your Shampoo to stay away from Akane!"

In the blink of an eye Cologne crossed the distance separating them and gave him a painful thwap. "Weren't you listening, boy? I said as plainly as day that Akane is only at risk if she first engages in dishonorable, unfair, unworthy tactics! Or do you think it's perfectly all right for someone to win a victory through such a method, as long as it's Akane Tendo who is doing it?"

"Like Shampoo wouldn't provoke her into it if she wanted to get justification to do it afterward," he grumbled back, forcing himself to use a milder tone. He wasn't mollified in the slightest, but for now it seemed wise to let discretion prove the better part of valor.

"Bah. Surely even a love-blinded fool like you can give my great-granddaughter the barest minimum of credit. Even if you think she would resort to such tactics in a heartbeat if it were only a question of her own desires, you must know that she doesn't want to look bad to her beloved husband."

The Lost Boy snorted. "Like he'd care. That jerk has never once let himself see how great Akane really is, how she deserves to be treated. He'd probably just laugh if Shampoo did that, at least if she used the Sloth stuff rather than the Cat." He forced the glare away from his face, replacing it with a mask of determination. "But I'm not like that; I won't just sit back and let Shampoo or Ranma or anyone treat her like that! I'll fight your great-granddaughter if it comes to that, old woman. I'm sure you'll see her again before I will, so make sure she knows."

Cologne's eyes narrowed. "Are you sure you want that, boy? Want me to tell my great-granddaughter that Ryoga Hibiki has declared she can't even defend herself from those who would turn her curse against her? Excuse me, not everyone, merely the one person who's always been willing to do just that?" She hesitated for a moment, teetering on the edge of two very different rebukes. It would be easy enough to let her anger rise into flames, the anger Ryoga's unthinking Akane-can-do-no-wrong attitude had sparked even in one as controlled as her. Easy enough to remind him that taking this tone was a very bad idea when they hadn't yet received, let alone passed along, the Nannichuan that Shampoo had ordered for him.

Ryoga took a half step backward, feeling a surge of anxiety mix with his anger as for a second the Matriarch's eyes seemed to burn. Then, in the instant of an eyeblink, that was gone, and suddenly the ancient figure in front of him was more recognizably an old woman than he could ever remember seeing. A woman old almost beyond his concept of the term, worn and shrunken and weary.

"Do you really believe that, Ryoga Hibiki?" the Matriarch asked quietly, staring at him with a gaze that Ryoga found it impossible to hold for long. "That Akane Tendo can do no wrong? That no matter what she does, it's okay because she's the one doing it? That she must always be shielded from the consequences of her actions? That my great-granddaughter's plan, one designed to teach empathy and understanding of what a curse victim goes through, is such a horrible travesty? That Akane must never, ever suffer any such _inconvenience_, no matter how many times she takes advantage of the true curse Shampoo bears?" She paused for a few moments, regarding him. "Well, do you?" she snapped.

"...No," Ryoga was forced to admit, in a small, grudging voice. "But that doesn't mean it's all right for Shampoo to just drop something like that on her out of the blue! At least she needs to tell Akane why she would do it, heck, even give Akane the chance to deliberately use one of those powders herself to figure out what it's like!"

"She has already requested that my son-in-law give all those details to Akane Tendo, that she would have fair warning." Cologne paused for another moment, scrutinizing Ryoga even more closely. He seemed to be experiencing a mixture of relief, doubt, and concern. If there was any anger at the thought that Ukyo Kuonji had received no such consideration, she couldn't find it. Truth be told, she wasn't surprised. At least this reaction was better than some he might have made. "Perhaps if Miss Tendo is so kind and sweet, such an all-around treasure as you believe, she'll come up with the idea herself to try out a curse."

Ryoga was already shaking his head. "Yeah, right, like Ranma will manage to explain any of this good enough for her to really understand. She'll be lucky if he only insults her enough to ruin half her day." That thought sparked another. "Um... Granny?" he asked tentatively. "I'd do a much better job than Ranma, I'm sure of it. Do you think you could lead me back to the Tendo dojo?"

"Perhaps. Right now I have more important things to discuss with you," she replied. Besides, if Ranma knew what was good for him he would already have communicated these things to Akane.

"Can't they wait?" he asked piteously. "I haven't seen her in so long... I finally made it back to her home the other day, but she was in the dojo training and I missed her then! When I heard about what Shampoo was going to do, I got so mad I ran out to find her and warn her to back off, and of course I got lost right away..." he stumbled to a halt as he realized that, although it certainly was a tragic story designed to raise pity in the heart of the average listener, he might have been better off omitting certain details when he was telling it to Cologne. "Er... I mean..."

"So you learned of this at the Tendo home," Cologne said, giving him a long, careful look. It sent chills running up and down Ryoga's spine, even though somehow the fear didn't seem to be directed toward himself. "Do you think Nabiki Tendo was deliberately trying to run you off, by using such a distraction?"

Ryoga made a disgusted sound. "If she didn't want me around, all she'd have to do is splash me, grab me, and throw me up into the sky. It'd take me another week just to find hot water, probably." At least, without the soap Kasumi had given him. "I figure she was just getting a few more kicks, by hitting me where it hurt." He waited a few moments, seeing if Cologne would reply. She remained thoughtfully silent, showing no signs of ire at his previous unfortunate choice of words. He gulped, and asked again, "So... could you please lead me over to the Tendo place? We can talk afterward, if you want."

"Ryoga, it's ten A.M. on a Tuesday," the Matriarch stated flatly. "Akane is in the middle of class right now. Trust me, boy, you've got nothing better to do right now than listen to one last lesson from me."

The Lost Boy glared up at the sun, as if it were one of the long line of conspirators who'd worked against him over the years. It declined to shift through an eighty degree arc to suit his convenience, and so he sighed and said, "All right. What did you want to talk about?" His brow creasing ever so slightly, he added, "And what did you mean, the last lesson?"

Cologne opted to open with actions rather than words. She turned away from Ryoga to gaze across the expanse of the lot. Extending her staff and placing the knobby end on the ground, the Matriarch closed her eyes and concentrated. For a long moment nothing visible happened... and then, slowly and smoothly, the blackened chunk of concrete rose from the depths of the earth.

"You're actually going to help me with this?" Ryoga breathed, uncertain as to why he'd receive such a stroke of fortune. Even from this distance, he could see that this time the concrete hadn't suffered any large gouges or scrapes. "I... I would really appreciate it."

"Don't misunderstand me," Cologne returned in a tone that brooked no argument. "And don't jump the gun either, boy. Take a closer look." Ryoga's eyes bulged as the broken slab suddenly levitated into the air and floated over toward them. The sight was in no way comparable to what the Tendo family had witnessed when Cologne unleashed the Fist of the Ice Bear, but Ryoga had been in Sapporo at the time. To him, the sight of eighty pounds of solid mass floating through the air was daunting enough. As the concrete settled down at his feet and Cologne gestured for him to examine it, he pushed aside his trepidation and complied.

From this distance, he could see that the chunk hadn't come through undamaged after all. There were numerous small scratches and nicks speckled over the block, though none were large enough to detect at the original distance. "Um, what did you want me to see?" he asked, unsure what the old woman's point could be. "That's about a dozen times better than I was doing."

"It's also the best I can do with three centuries of experience under my belt," Cologne retorted. "My personal style is Air, not Earth. In my youth I knew a master of that school, and he could have brought that thing out of the ground larger and stronger than when it went in, by mixing the soil and stone of the earth itself into the concrete."

"Whoah," Ryoga breathed, glimpsing vistas he hadn't yet dreamed of.

Cologne's staff against his head brought him back to reality, though the Matriarch used just enough force to regain his attention, not to actually dish out pain. "As Matriarch of the Chinese Amazons, I have at least heard of all major techniques and styles that our people collected or developed over three thousand years. I've learned as many as my personal limits allow. But with the elemental styles, it is impossible for anyone to master more than one of them, because of the nature of chi in general and the human aura in particular."

"So you know some stuff about what I'm trying to learn, but you can't teach me anything really big," Ryoga said. "I still don't get why you thought that was so important. Even whatever you do know and can pass on to me would be a lot of help!"

"Boy, what we have here is a failure to communicate," Cologne pronounced. "I want you to think back to the one lesson I taught you directly."

"The Breaking Point," he said. "That's an earth technique, isn't it?" It was something he'd been suspecting lately, a suspicion that had moved closer and closer to certainty with all his recent training in the Graveyard Shift and its potential variations. Cologne certainly hadn't taught it like that, hadn't said any of the things he'd learned for the Graveyard Shift about focusing his own strength and self into the rock he was trying to affect. Then again, he could understand why the Amazons taught the Bakkusai Tenketsu like they did; his training for the Graveyard Shift hadn't had any kind of secondary physical benefit.

"Ah, you do remember. Now draw your mind back just a bit... not quite as far back as the training itself, think of your battle with my son-in-law and its aftermath. I haven't forgotten," Cologne said quietly, ominously, dangerously. "I remember all too well the image of you charging him with your finger outstretched, as if to trigger his own bloody exploding death. I recall a piglet squealing in fury when I revealed that the earth's body is the only one the technique affects."

Ryoga said nothing in reply. Cologne didn't allow him to get away with silence forever, though. "Have you forgotten, Ryoga? Do you still resent that the move doesn't do everything you assumed it did?"

"No," he muttered, and fell silent once more.

"Do you hold a grudge at me for letting you think what you did?"

"No. But..." he struggled for a few more moments, not sure that what he was about to say was true. Cologne merely stared at him, letting the silence stretch until he continued, "But I would like to know why."

"Certainly," Cologne returned in a silky smooth voice that immediately made Ryoga certain he shouldn't have asked. "It was a test. Much like the one I set for my son-in-law, when I shared with him the secret of the Kachu Tenshin Amaguriken. That is, those two situations are similar in my motivations and goals, that each time I was laying a challenge before a talented young warrior to see how he fared." She pinned him with the most intense stare Ryoga had experienced in a long time. "Ranma passed. You failed."

Ryoga hung his head. "Yeah, I guess I can see that," he said quietly. The mistakes that Ranma had forced him to acknowledge weren't the only ones he'd faced up to since that fight. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry. I am still glad of the gift you gave me, though."

"It is the last such gift you will receive from the Chinese Amazons," Cologne pronounced. In the privacy of her own mind, she continued, _'Unless you go to truly heroic lengths to overcome the poor start you made.'_ Frankly, his reaction to the most recent twist of this conversation was more than she'd hoped for, offering the barest glimmer of light to Cologne that he might be redeemable for her purposes after all, that a few years of work might see him worthy of the kind of trust she'd like to be able to place in him.

Perhaps she could lay a little more groundwork for that possible redemption now. "Remember what I said a while ago about my people collecting styles, secrets, and techniques? It's one of the most honorable positions in our society. We greatly value the ones who carry out that task, who travel over the world seeking new or forgotten elements of the Art, arcane lore, treasures too dangerous to allow ordinary people to get their hands on them, that sort of thing. I believed it would be a good fit for you, Ryoga. That it would work well for everyone to take you back to the village, give you a few years of stability to grow and find a girl or two who were a good match for you, then let you go forth as a family to stumble over knowledge and artifacts for a greater, worthwhile purpose."

Ryoga wasn't sure just what to think of that. No end to his journeys... but companionship along them? He shook his head, forcefully discarding the idea since it obviously wasn't an option any longer. Wanting to change the subject to one less painful, not to mention less personal, he replied, "You said you tested me and Ranma both. Is that what you're planning for him and Shampoo?"

"I'm not making any plans that detailed for their future together," Cologne replied. "If you want to know whether I think it's a good choice for them, then the answer is yes. But they will find their own way together as they learn new things and grow stronger, whether that's in our home village, abroad as they journey, here in Japan if we decide to found a new outpost of the Joketsuzoku in Nerima, or perhaps some path that they'll chart all on their own."

"Maybe you ought to tell Ranma that," Ryoga suggested. Anything that got the pigtailed paragon of pride away from Akane for good sounded good to him. "If he's really got that kind of freedom and choices waiting for him with Shampoo, I don't think he knows it yet."

"All in good time," Cologne replied. "That's something that should develop naturally, as he and Shampoo talk about their hopes and dreams for the future. Too much interference on my part will only be counterproductive."

Ryoga blinked in mild disorientation, caught off-guard by this attitude. _'Maybe I've spent too much time around Akane's and Ranma's dads.'_

"I generally only step in when I know there's something real to be gained," the Matriarch continued briskly, moving the conversation back to the point she'd originally intended to make. "Such as not allowing my son-in-law to lose a valuable rival and sometime-ally to a preventable training accident."

"Huh? What's that supposed to mean, Granny?"

Cologne gestured first toward the block of concrete, then to the ground in general. "I mean I may not have any real strength in the Earth style, which you must know by now is what you're stumbling and groping toward, but I know enough of the secrets of chi and the human body's use of it to know just how close to the edge you were walking." She braced the tip of her staff against the ground and vaulted to its head, the better to look him in the eye. "Without proper training, without the oversight of a true master of the style, you can injure or kill yourself by pushing too far too fast. It's true of all four elemental schools, and in fact it's the case for any set of techniques at this level. You're taking your first true steps up to the next stage of mastery, when you begin to understand the force of life itself, when you learn things that can extend your lifespan immeasurably and give you strength enough to shake the world around you."

Impossibly the Matriarch's gaze intensified. Ryoga would have taken a step back if he wasn't paralyzed like a bird by the gaze of a snake (with the small but crucial difference that this 'snake' was working in the bird's best interests). "Do you understand me now? For your own sake, don't rush into this. There's no-one to guide you, Ryoga, by Chinese Amazon law and the choices you yourself made, I can't give you more than this. You're on your own, winding your way over treacherous ground indeed. In a situation like that there's no shame in taking baby steps. Quite the opposite in fact; it would be a terrible shame if Ranma lost one of his most valuable comrades." Cologne paused for emphasis, then said, "If Akane lost her most faithful friend."

"A- Akane," he managed through a mouth dry as cotton. "I... I wanted to teach her these things too, once I mastered them enough... it's why I was working so hard."

"If you're willing to hear an old woman's words of wisdom, then let me suggest you hold off on that for at least five years," Cologne returned. "That should give you time enough to learn what you need, let you teach her without putting her at risk." _'Hopefully it will also be long enough for her to get over losing Ranma to Shampoo, move past the bitterness and sorrow, and grow to be a better person because of it.'_

* * *

Kodachi Kuno, the Black Rose of St. Hebereke, the rising young star of the Rhythmic Gymnastics world, and the destined bride of Ranma Saotome, was in quite a good mood. Her position on top of this four-story building afforded her an excellent view of the streets and the people beneath her. A gentle, balmy breeze ruffled her hair and slipped around her leotard-clad form like a caress. The sun was sinking toward the far horizon behind her, its position perfect for hiding her form in its glare. Her darling Ranma would never see her coming.

_'Oh, yes, my sweet, it's been too long and we have so much to make up for! Should we hurry back to my private rooms and all the luxury that awaits us there? Or would even that be too much of a delay, shall we renew and strengthen the ties that bind us in the very den of iniquity upon which I stand?'_ Her scouting had only been thorough enough to establish that this building, the one perfectly situated for her ambu— grand entrance, was a love hotel. The Black Rose had no idea where it ranked on the quality scale, and she wasn't about to leave her post to investigate the building's interior. Ranma darling's school had already let out for the day, and she knew for a fact that today one Kuno at least would not be delaying her love's departure.

Kodachi glanced over her shoulder, sending a smirk at the roof's other occupant. "Brother dear, please do stop struggling. You brought this on yourself, you know."

Tatewaki only increased the fury of his struggles and muffled cries. Neither had much effect on the double-length octuple-strength gymnastic ribbon gagging him and binding him from head to toe. Kodachi wondered idly whether the strangled utterances were threats directed against her or entreaties to the heavens to give him strength. "You of all people should know how pointless that is. My ribbons are strong enough to restrain even my darling Ranma." For a moment she lost herself in a starry-eyed fantasy.

Tatewaki did pause in his struggles this time, while his face acquired a faint tinge of green. How the heavens must weep, not only that the Blue Thunder should be brought to such a state as this, but even more so that he was able to follow his twisted sister's line of thought so clearly. It was a mental picture the kendoist could well have done without.

Blinking away the pleasant thoughts, Kodachi continued, "And since the material is rated with half again enough strength to subdue such a specimen of manhood as Ranma sweetums, there's no way on earth you'll do anything more than get yourself tangled up worse."

Kuno resumed his struggles and muffled invective.

"Fine, be that way," Kodachi snapped. "Don't blame me if you end up cutting off the flow of blood to something important. Not your head, obviously," she quipped, then dismissed her brother from her thoughts. While it might be true that he was responsible for her choosing this day and way to greet her beloved, that didn't mean she wanted to waste time thinking about him, or the other pointless objects she had dragged up to this rooftop.

Blocking out Tatewaki's presence and struggles with the ease of long practice, Kodachi resumed watching the street below. "Anticipation certainly does make the heart grow fonder, Ranma darling. My own heart beats in my lonely schoolgirl chest like the thunder of drums. I can only dare to dream how your own heart must long for me. But fear not, my sweet, we shall soon be together."

Kodachi fell momentarily silent. The soliloquy was enjoyable, but somehow not fully satisfying. "Oh, yes, darling, yes—mere words of their own simply aren't enough. I feel like I could almost... _sing_..."

Clearing her throat, searching her memory for the right song, and switching languages as only one who had received a hideously expensive private education could, the Black Rose gave wing to the words and emotions surging within her. "Oh, it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood, a beautiful day in the neighborhood... hm hmm hm hmm hm hmmm hmmm hm... a beautiful day to catch a friend, a beautiful day to seduce your man..."

She broke off suddenly, sensing impending trouble. Her brother's struggles, the frenzy of which had redoubled during her happy little tune, had brought him dangerously near the cargo she had brought to the rooftop. Well, perhaps 'dangerously' wasn't the right word; if Tatewaki should crash into the items and wreck that part of the Black Rose's afternoon agenda, the only danger would be that her brother would continue boring her to tears with his ridiculous claims.

That thought was unpleasant enough for Kodachi to abandon her post with all haste, zipping over to her brother's side, tightening her grip on the end of the ribbon, and giving him a gentle, ladylike nudge with one foot that sent him halfway across the rooftop. He was brought up short only when he'd exhausted all the slack of the fabric. "Brother dear, please do not knock those over." She nodded toward the ugly iron buckets full of water. "I am well and truly tired of hearing you spout this ridiculous nonsense about Ranma darling and dark sorcery and the efficacy of these toys in washing away the deception. Today is the day your dear little sister forces you to face the folly of your fantasies. And then," her eyes becoming starry again, "I shall join him in a hot bath to make up for the indignity of the unexpected cold shower, and then..."

_'She couldn't have been merciful enough to twist this blasted ribbon over my ears as well, could she?'_ Kuno grumbled mentally.

* * *

_'All quiet on the western front,'_ Ranma thought, sneaking a glance over his shoulder at Akane. He wasn't sure what the phrase meant, couldn't remember more about it than that it was something he'd heard in English class, but it seemed to fit the moment. Their current position was due west of the Tendo dojo, their course bearing directly east as they headed for home... and Akane was unusually quiet.

_'She hasn't been all that talkative in general these last couple of days,'_ he mused. _'Dang, I'm still not sure whether I did the right thing or not.'_ He'd given it a lot of thought, and had decided that the 'don't splash Shampoo or she'll splash you back' talk would be better handed off to Nabiki. She was much more likely to succeed in getting the message across to her sister. Ranma had decided that his part would be to take care of any follow-up that was needed, such as if Akane had confronted him over just what he thought of all this. The thought of such a conversation wasn't very pleasant, but it was better than the idea of skipping out on the matter entirely just because it was a difficult one.

_'Sure thought she would've had something to say to me about it by now. I mean, it was Monday morning that I decided to pay Nabiki to do it, and Monday evening when she told me she'd done it and gotten Akane to agree not to go for the water attacks any more. That was two days ago, or a day and a half at least. I'd almost rather have Akane bring it up and get it out in the open. Does it really not matter to her at all? Huh, I should be so lucky.'_

Well, if she wouldn't bring it up, maybe he had better. Ranma spent the next few minutes trying to think of a good way to ease into the subject. _'Or then again, maybe the best thing to do is just get her talking about other stuff, and see where that leads.'_

It was easy enough to think of a good topic to open the conversation. He might not have been a part of the encounter after class today between Akane, Sayuri, Yuka, and those other girls who weren't in their club, but he'd still overheard most of it. "You look kinda disappointed, Akane," he ventured.

"What?" she said, dragging her attention back to the present and focusing it on Ranma. "Did you say something, Ranma?"

"Said you looked kinda disappointed," he repeated. "That you couldn't go hang out with all those girls this afternoon."

"It happens," Akane said. "It would have been nice if they'd wanted to do it tomorrow, instead of today. With some warning like that, I might have been able to go too."

"I can't see the appeal myself," Ranma admitted. "I mean, karaoke? What's the point to singin' a song and doing a worse job of it than whoever it was that recorded it?"

She shook her head. "It's just fun, Ranma. A fun time to go and hang out with your friends." Her expressionless look cracked a bit. "It's been a long time since I was able to make it to something like that."

"So you shoulda gone to this one," he replied.

"Excuse me, have you forgotten that I'm training with your father in the afternoons?" Akane asked, the barest hint of an edge in her voice.

"Course not," Ranma answered. "But today was the only chance you had for something you wanted to get out and do, right? You shoulda asked me to tell Pop you weren't gonna make it home on time this once. If he's got a problem with it, you know you can count on me to kick his butt and get him back in line."

"You mean, I should know I can count on you to blow off my training and encourage me to do it too?" The edge was no longer merely a hint.

"Geez, I try to do something nice and this is the thanks I get?" Ranma complained. "I wasn't talking about blowing off your training. Heck, you could even say I'm helping it, cause if Pop ain't taught you yet that Anything Goes is about flexibility and adapting to stuff, then he's really falling down on the job."

That was something Genma had taken a good bit of pain to communicate to her, actually. She still didn't understand what Ranma was trying to say here, but she decided to get clarification before passing any more judgment. "So how does that fit into you telling me I should've just skipped my afternoon training?"

"Simple—you don't skip the session, you put it off until after you get back. It ain't gonna hurt my old man to get his exercise in the evening instead of the afternoon. And like I said, if he complains about it when I tell him, I can just ask him to use the unexpected free time to 'spar' with me."

"That wouldn't leave me any time to do my homework," Akane pointed out. The edge was gone from her tone, though, now that she knew Ranma hadn't meant it the way she'd first thought.

"And _that_, Grasshopper, is what you blow off."

Akane rolled her eyes. "Thanks but no thanks, Ranma. Not even if I didn't have any homework. Mr. Saotome deserves better than something like that. He didn't have to train me, after all." Genma would have snorted loudly at that last sentence, remembering just what it had been like when Akane 'requested' his aid.

He wasn't here to give that snort, but his son filled in for him. However, Ranma's exhalation of disbelief was triggered by a different sentence. "Don't tell me you haven't seen through that one yet."

"Huh? What's that supposed to mean?"

"Sure, be glad he's training you, but don't let him pull the wool over your eyes or nothing, Akane. You're doing him a favor by learning too." _'At least, if you're serious about it,'_ Ranma amended. "Think about it. What's Pop, or any sensei, got to show for his life if he's not learning new things and still growing in the Art? The only thing left for somebody like that is to help new people down the path. If you're lettin' him teach you real stuff," with Herculean effort he kept any hint of doubt out of his voice as he said this, "then you're giving him one more way to justify his life, one more reason to stand up and be proud of himself. He oughta be the one thanking you for going to him for training. It's not like you don't have other choices, after all."

The duo walked in silence for a little while. At last, in a stunned tone, Akane stated, "That may be the proudest, most overconfident, egotistical thing I've heard in my entire life, Ranma."

"You think so? Huh." Ranma turned and faced up toward the sky. "MOKO TAKABISHA!" The teens watched the chi blast as it shot away into the distance. "Didn't look any bigger than usual to me," he said, turning back to Akane as the two began walking again. "I think you're just confused cause it's something you never thought of before."

"What I think—!" Only with a great deal of effort did Akane clamp her lips shut around the traitorous exclamation. Oh, how she wanted to hit him with the news of what she and Genma were really working on! Oh, how she longed to force him to face the fact that his father knew such a powerful technique, was training her in secrets that were still a mystery to Ranma himself! But that wasn't what her sensei wanted, and Akane herself wasn't quite worked up enough to disregard her own goal, or forget how satisfying it would be to reveal these things in the right way. Better to keep quiet now, and eventually enlighten Ranma by demonstrating the moves on his hide.

"Well? What do you think?" he prompted her after the silence had stretched a few seconds.

Akane stuck out her tongue at him in the most childish pose she could manage. Tauntingly rather than with any real heat, she said, "I think you're an overconfident jerk."

"Feh. Whatever. Blow me off when I'm trying to teach you something," Ranma grumbled, turning away.

The youngest Tendo stood stock-still for the next several moments, caught totally off-guard by this unexpected and out-of-character response. Eventually regaining some self-possession, she hurried across the distance that had opened up between them. "What's that supposed to—LOOK OUT!"

* * *

Even if she hadn't seen him coming, the chi blast would have been enough to alert Kodachi to Ranma's approach. As it was, it merely made her more excited to be reminded of her beloved's strength and skill. She watched, waiting for the perfect moment, smiling ever more broadly at the sight of the squabble between her darling Ranma and that Tendo harridan.

As if to underscore how wrong for each other those two were, how perfect was the harmony between herself and Ranma sweetums, the moment when he moved into position was the one in which the distance between himself and the peasant was at its greatest. Holding in her laughter for just a few seconds more, Kodachi snapped her wrist then pulled sharply back. The first motion whipped her brother, still bound inextricably in the ribbon, from horizontal on the roof to more or less upright. Before he could fall, the second move sent him spinning furiously in place like an oversized top.

Even as the ribbon released the last of its hold on him, she sent it snaking forth to grasp the framework connecting the handles of the dozen 'cold iron' buckets. "Do pay attention now, brother dear," Kodachi commanded, managing to overlook the fact that the dizziness which prevented him from interfering must surely prevent him from really being aware of what was about to happen. "I don't want to hear any more nonsense about this washing dearest Ranma's humanity away." Exerting all her skill, strength, and control, the Black Rose whipped the buckets into the air and over the street without spilling a single drop of water—at least, not until the moment when she wanted those drops to be spilled. Then, with her peals of triumphant glee no longer restrained, she hauled the empty buckets back on an intercept course with Tatewaki, leapt to the fire escape, and hurried down to greet her beloved.

* * *

On hearing Akane's cry of warning, Ranma took one instant to see where she was looking, then spun to face the threat. It was Kodachi Kuno, halfway down the fire escape of a nearby building and descending at a speed Ranma himself would have been hard pressed to exceed. Making a split-second decision that the best way to deal with this would be to lead the Black Rose away from Akane over the rooftops, then lose her once he had a moment to duck out of her sight and trigger his transformation, Ranma gave a mighty leap backward. If all had gone as planned, the move would have set him firmly on the rooftop of the building across the street from Kodachi—a distance he knew Kodachi could cover in pursuit of him, but Akane couldn't.

Of course, his plan failed to take into account the unseen shower descending toward the street. Kodachi had flung the buckets even higher into the air before upending them, a last-second inspiration that the Black Rose had hoped would allow her to beat the water down to the ground. After all, why should Ranma be the only one to suffer a drenching? And certainly the love of her life would better enjoy the sight of her leotard after the water did its work.

Kodachi was fast, but she wasn't quite that fast. Girl, boy, and water all reached the same height above the street at roughly the same time, Kodachi descending at her best controlled speed, gravity drawing down the water just that little bit faster, and Ranma jumping up, up, and away. Time seemed to slow as his eyes locked with those of the gymnast, as he stared grimly at her while she smirked in pleasure, welcome, anticipation, and triumph. Even as the water caught up and molded itself around their forms, Kodachi pushed away from the fire escape, summoning every bit of leg strength she could muster, transforming her descent into a lateral jump toward the object of her desire.

Her arms locked around the waist of an empty shirt, as a feathered blur burst past her.

She hadn't even begun to recover by the time she slammed directly into the wall. It was ingrained reflex alone that allowed her to regain control of her fall, kicking against a windowsill three quarters of the way to the ground and losing enough speed to land safely. For all that her body was undamaged, though, the youngest Kuno staggered away from her landing site. The shirt still clenched absently in one hand, she wove her way over to the middle of the street where his pants had landed. "Ranma...?" she breathed, running one disbelieving hand over their empty length.

"Kodachi, he's there." This was Akane, pointing up to Ranma's circling form, hoping against hope that this wasn't somehow going to make things worse. Ranma had only tried once to make Tatewaki see reason about his original curse, an effort which had failed utterly. As far as she knew, no-one had ever attempted anything like that with Kodachi. Maybe, just possibly maybe, it wouldn't blow up in their faces. "He's right there! Look up!"

"Be SILENT!" the Black Rose raged, spinning faster than Akane would have dreamed possible and striking directly toward her face with a club pulled from parts unknown. It would have been a more impressive attack if Akane had been close enough for it to connect, though; Kodachi in her distraction had noticed only that Akane spoke, not that the youngest Tendo hadn't first crossed any of the distance separating the two girls. Her attack hit empty air, leaving her overextended and stumbling.

Ranma's skreeling descent put a halt to any further hostilities. _'This ain't good. Where's the Air style when I really need it?'_ he thought frantically. He'd known from the first moment he laid eyes on Shampoo's new cursed form that a falcon was nowhere near as helpless as Akane seemed to think, but there was no way in the world he wanted to prove the tomboy wrong by lighting into somebody with talons and beak. _'Why couldn't this have happened just two damn weeks from now? I ain't even mastered the training exercise yet, let alone learned something that'd let me attack her without hurting her for real!'_

Hoping against hope that it would prevent any more attacks, Ranma managed to grab the club on his fly-by and wrench it from Kodachi's grasp. Flinging it away down an alley, he banked sharply and came in for a landing on the street between the two girls, though in the interests of Akane's safety he settled down much closer to Kodachi.

"Ranma!" Akane exclaimed, hurrying protectively forward as if to negate that consideration.

"Ranma?" the Black Rose breathed, falling to her knees and staring desperately down.

He met her gaze, though it was much harder than he'd expected it to be—unbelievably hard considering that Kodachi's gaze held no anger, rage, or remnant of fighting fury. All the blood had drained from her face, leaving her violet eyes looking like smudged bruises in a mask as pale as bone. Kodachi continued, choking on the words, getting them out only as a whisper, "Is... is it... you?"

Even more troubled now, he gathered his strength and gave a bob of his head; up, down, an unquestionable yes.

Kodachi stared for one moment longer, her face now showing a cacophony of emotions. Shock... disbelief... terror... agony... Just as Ranma felt like he must break eye contact or snap himself, she wrenched her gaze away. The motion begun by her eyes continued to her head, then her whole body, as the Black Rose spun and darted away, his forgotten shirt still clutched in one white-knuckled hand.

Ranma and Akane stared after her, and could find nothing to say. Even if there hadn't been a language barrier in place.

"The vengeance of heaven is slow but sure." Clearly the same limitation didn't apply to Tatewaki. Both Anything Goes students turned to stare at the fire escape down which Kuno was descending. He was still feeling a little dizzy, and he was bruised from the buckets' return to the rooftop, but as he passed below the one-story mark he was able to jump the rest of the way and land safely. "I saw her face, Saotome. At last it seems that the dark sorceries you have used to bind my sister to you have met their timely end. And if my twisted sister has finally found freedom from her chains, can even greater liberties be far behind?"

Ranma glared darkly at the kendoist, tuning out his continued ranting. _'I am SO gonna flatten you in this body once I've learned how to do it without scarring, crippling, or killing you.'_ The thought wasn't nearly enough to satisfy him. _'Maybe I could scratch him up just a little right now? Just a few tiny cuts on the arm?... Nah, that wouldn't be enough to give me any kind of satisfaction.'_

Wishing he could form a sinister grin, Ranma fluttered away to what even the most overprotective person would consider a safe spot—sheltered by a ledge at second story height, visible only if he leaned forward. He did just that, gave a loud screech to make sure he had Akane's attention, then gestured toward Kuno with one wing. "Don't worry about me, tomboy. Go ahead, give him his own flying lesson."

* * *

It started as an itch on the back of her neck. Junko ignored it for several minutes, focusing on the homework spread out before her at the café table. However, as the conviction grew more and more pronounced, she found it increasingly difficult to concentrate on the task. At last, frowning and sighing, she twisted around in her seat. From this new vantage point, it was easy to see that her suspicion had been correct. "Hey, Manami," she said as she turned back to face the girl sharing the table with her. "I think the café owner is getting a little angry."

"My heart bleeds," Manami grumbled. "Like either of us wanted to be stuck here so long."

"Well, I wouldn't really mind," Junko confessed. Better to do her work here than in a bedroom shared with two younger sisters. "But I know you'd rather be with Gosunkugi right now."

"Sure, that would be my first choice, but it's not just that. I'd rather be doing anything interesting, with him or with you or Nabiki or all by myself. Not just sitting here waiting to finally get the call to move."

Junko turned around in her chair again, uncomfortably aware that the intensity of the proprietor's stare continued to mount. It wasn't surprising, really; she and Manami had been at their table for three quarters of an hour now, and in all that time they'd each only purchased one fruit drink. "Maybe I should go buy something else for while we're waiting," she proposed. "What would you like?"

"Oh, no you don't!" Manami said crisply. "In case you forgot, we're going to need our appetites available before too much longer." She pulled out her cell phone and gave it a glare, then shoved it away again and glanced around the open-air café. Only two other tables were occupied, outnumbered five-to-one by the vacant stands. "So mister Cool Refreshing Beverage Pusher doesn't like it that we're taking up his space? It's not like we're keeping paying customers away. If he's frustrated at how little business he's getting, he ought to blame himself or Ukyo Kuonji, not us. It's not our fault he set up shop here."

"Still, maybe I should go buy a couple more drinks. We don't have to actually drink them," Junko pointed out.

Manami rolled her eyes. "Whatever. You're paying—Ah-HAH!" This as the long-silent cell phone finally began to buzz. She pulled it out and answered, hoping this was indeed the call they were waiting for and not a random wrong number. "Hello, Manami speaking."

"Come on over," said the voice on the other end of the phone. Manami didn't recognize his identity, other than in the most basic way. It was doubtless some random freshman that had gotten a little too deep in debt to the boss. She could tell by the nervous tremor in the voice that this was a first-timer. Nabiki's usual modus operandi in situations like that was to give out an easy job, but accompany it with a glimpse of just how badly things could go for the trainee if he or she screwed it up. "There hasn't been more than five people here at a time for the last fifteen minutes, and I got out into the street and checked up and down and it doesn't look like too many more are on their way, so—"

"Right, right, stop babbling. We're on our way. We'll see soon enough whether you picked a good moment or not." Smirking, Manami ended the call and stood up. "Come on, Junko, let's blow this popsicle stand."

A brisk two minutes' walk took them to their real destination for the afternoon: Ucchan's Okonomiyaki. The two girls passed through the door and took a minute to size up the interior of the restaurant. Not because it was their first time—rare indeed was the Furinkan student who hadn't visited Ucchan's at least once—but to decide on their next move.

At least, Manami was doing this. Junko just followed her lead as the other girl strode forward and selected a vacant seat three spaces down from Ukyo's grill. Her body language made it apparent that Junko should take the seat on her left, closer to Ukyo, rather than farther away on her right. Junko sat down and waited for her cue.

"What'll it be, ladies?" This was Ukyo, giving the generic greeting after taking a moment to check the girls out. The chef was fairly sure she'd seen them before, but they weren't common enough customers to let her put names, or more importantly okonomiyaki preferences, to the faces.

"One seafood deluxe, please," Manami answered.

"Two of the daily special for me," Junko requested.

_'What I wouldn't give for her metabolism,'_ Nabiki's second-in-command brooded darkly, distracted for a moment from their mission. It wasn't like they could get started right away anyway; they needed to wait for Ukyo to finish cooking their order and pass it along to them. Once the conversation got started, it shouldn't be interrupted... at least not until the interruption was Ukyo dealing herself in.

"So, did you hear the latest?" she asked Junko once they'd received their food and eaten some.

Junko shook her head, finished her first okonomiyaki, and started on her second. "What is it?" she asked.

"Shampoo brought Ranma lunch at school today."

"Huh?" Junko blinked. "Since when is _that_ news?"

"Because she didn't do it like she usually does, apparently. At least, if this is true," Manami demurred. "I only heard it second-hand, and my source said that almost nobody was around to see it happen." She winced slightly at the unpleasant metallic scrape of Ukyo's small spatula across the grill, as the chef fumbled the preparation of her current okonomiyaki. "She didn't drop by at lunch to try and snuggle with him while he eats. She didn't break through classroom walls until she found the one he was in. She didn't even chase after him at all! She just came by the office in midmorning and dropped off the lunch for him, told the secretary that she wanted to give it to him but she was going to be busy during the actual lunch period."

"Wow, that _is_ different," Junko said, wide-eyed. Different enough from Shampoo's usual methods that she wondered what it all meant. It wasn't something Manami had made up just for the purposes of this conversation, she could tell that much. Her friend was good enough to hide what she was thinking if she kept silent, but Nabiki was the only one Junko knew who could speak to her and remain a sealed book while doing so.

"Yeah," Manami agreed. She'd spent quite a bit of time pondering the implications ever since she'd heard the news, from one of the lower-rank girls in Nabiki's network who'd happened to be in the office when the incident happened. Ultimately it was the boss who'd decide what to do about this new twist on affairs, but that didn't mean Manami ought not to give it some thought as well.

(Later that evening, she would learn that the whole story was nothing but a fabrication, something Nabiki had made up and passed along to her via third party so that she'd believe it when she in turn shared it with Junko. Nabiki and Manami both knew that the other girl wasn't good enough at thinking on her feet to go along naturally with something she knew was a lie. That Nabiki had used her own second-in-command as that much of a cat's-paw... it would be the source of half an hour's pleasant nostalgia for Manami, as the memories of her freshman year and her initial recruitment by the boss came surging back.)

That was still a ways off, however. At the moment Manami had no clue that she'd been used like a two-dollar pair of chopsticks, but she did know she had better things to do than think too much about what she'd heard. Discussing this Amazon antic was only meant to lead into more important things. "Never thought we'd see _her_ showing a little discretion," she continued. "Usually her idea of subtle is to ask him to go out with her, rather than latching onto him and trying to strip them both down to the buff." From the corner of her eye she noted that her genial host was currently anything but. Ukyo's back was ramrod straight, one eye was twitching like crazy, and her face was twisted into a dark scowl. A party of five students that had just come through the door took one look and headed right back outside again. Manami thanked her lucky stars that Ukyo didn't appear to notice; if she had, the chef would surely have exploded right here and now. And that wouldn't do. Not at all.

Giving a deep sigh, she said, "It's so sad, don't you think?" Another truth; the matter she was discussing didn't actually tug her heart-strings, but within her own mind Manami regarded it as sad indeed. Not to mention pathetic.

Junko nodded soberly. She didn't know whether Nabiki had given Manami any private instructions for this skirmish, but when the two of them were receiving their orders together the middle Tendo had been straightforward and forthright. They were free to use their own judgment in how to lead up to it, Nabiki had said, but there was one point they needed to make absolutely sure Ukyo Kuonji overheard. She had then gone on to illuminate said point, revealing something that Junko honestly hadn't thought of before. It was all too obvious once Nabiki had pointed it out, though, and Manami was right—it was sad. "It really is. Shampoo tries so hard, pushes and pushes, keeps on trying to get close to him and honestly believing she's got a chance, and she doesn't. She never had, and she never will."

_'Perfect,' _Manami thought admiringly while finishing the last bites of her okonomiyaki. It would be even more admirable if this was something Junko could control, if she could elicit at will the kind of response they were counting on. If she could do it even when she wasn't honestly saying something she believed, it would be a truly fearsome talent. However, that wasn't the way of things. Her comrade in arms meant every word she had said, and every one she was going to say. That she would get to speak the rest of her message was all too obvious, as Ukyo's anger became blunted with confusion. The chef hesitated just a few moments longer, to which Manami mentally shook her head in reproof. _'Please, Miss Kuonji. As if there's any way you can resist.'_

Sure enough, Ukyo stepped away from the grill and closer to Junko. "Why's that?" she asked, although 'demanded' might have been a better word. "Why do you say that, and why would it be sad if it was true?"

"Isn't it sad?" Junko answered, switching conversational partners without a hitch. "That she tries so hard for something that's totally out of her reach, something she never had any chance of getting and never will? Bad enough if that was just some random goal she wanted, but it's even worse that we're talking about a thing as important as love! She loves him, even if she doesn't have a clue how to show it here in Japan, and she'd have a better chance at getting him to love her back if she was that crazy Kuno girl!"

Ukyo stared wide-eyed at her. The chef wondered for an instant whether this was some kind of joke, but just as quickly dismissed the idea. The other girl's words carried complete and total conviction; she really believed what she'd said about Shampoo never having had a chance to begin with, and she believed as well that this truth was a tragic one. Ukyo stood in silence for a bit, turning these thoughts over in her mind, trying to make sense of them. _'I guess maybe I could see that as kind of sad,' _she mentally conceded. _'If there really was some reason why everything Shampoo ever did or said to try to get close to Ranma honey was just a moot point.'_

"But that's not how it is!" she burst out. "What are you, blind? Or are you the only girl in school who doesn't know about their new 'his and hers' curses! Have you really not seen how she's been sneaking closer and closer to him, just... _stealing_ more and more of his time these days!"

"It doesn't matter," Junko said firmly. "It's not doing her any good."

Ukyo ran her hand across her brow, then down over her eyes. "I honestly think you believe that, and I also honestly think you're talking out your butt," she stated. "Go away."

"No, you don't get it! I'm not saying Shampoo hasn't gotten any closer to him, but that's all she'll ever manage! To be a friend to him, maybe a close friend even, but he'll never take her up on more. Not with what comes along for the ride if he does make a choice like that!"

Despite herself, Ukyo could feel her conviction being worn away by the waves of the other girl's certainty. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"I mean, she calls herself his wife. Why is that? Because it's how Amazons do things." Junko fired off a meaning-filled look. "And what's another thing Amazons do? How did Ranma's first few encounters with her go?"

"He was running for his life. So what?" Ukyo snapped. "You obviously have no idea how much of a 'forgive and forget' kind of guy Ranma honey is. She's had plenty of time to write over that earlier image with her little sex kitten routine."

"I'm not talking about Ranma's feelings for her," Junko explained patiently. "Sure, he's had worse stuff than that, probably even worse stuff that was just misunderstandings if half the rumors at school are true." Ukyo nodded involuntarily. "I wasn't saying anything about Ranma still holding a grudge against her. That's the kind of thing a girl as pretty as Shampoo could work her way past for sure. I'm talking about the future, and what marrying her would mean." She paused, giving Ukyo a sad but reassuring smile. It was sad news for the Amazon, all right, but Ukyo Kuonji should be only too relieved to hear this. "You don't think he'd really be okay with that, do you? Bringing up his children under a bunch of fossilized laws that say they have to kill or marry someone for defeating them? No matter how much he likes her, you don't honestly think he'd go for that, do you?"

All the breath left Ukyo's lungs in a rush. She actually had to catch hold of the counter with one arm to steady herself. "Not... not the past, and not the junk that's going on now... but the future. I can't believe it! You're right, you're absolutely right! I never even once stopped to think about it like that!"

"Ranma probably hasn't either." This was Manami, deeming it safe at last to join the conversation. Junko's people skills had done their work; Ukyo was stunned and reeling, overcome by the realization that she simply hadn't thought far enough ahead, and wide open for reasonable suggestions. "I'm sure you know him better than I do, but that doesn't seem like his kind of thing. There is one thing I wonder, though..." Again, this was something she honestly meant.

Junko picked up on it. "What's that, Manami?"

"Whether Shampoo, or at least her great-grandmother, has seen it all along. It could be that they're gambling Ranma won't pick up on it until it's too late. Hoping he'd be too honorable to just walk away afterward, if they did get him to marry her and he only realized too late what he'd really set himself up for."

There was silence for a moment as all three girls contemplated this. Ukyo was the first to come out of her fugue. "It's been fun, girls, but I can't spare more time to talk. I think I need to close up shop for a little..." Her voice trailed off as she remembered something. Ranma had told her during today's astronomy club meeting that he was planning to spend the afternoon in the air. He wasn't going to be available anytime soon. "No, wait, never mind. That's going to have to wait," she said, speaking the last sentence more to herself than to her two customers. Tomorrow would be soon enough. Heaving a frustrated, but ultimately hopeful sigh, she walked back behind the grill. "Can I get you anything else? On the house."

"Well, we really need to be going ourselves," Manami temporized.

"So can you put a pork deluxe and a vegetarian special in a box for me?" Junko asked eagerly.

_'I wouldn't just kill for her metabolism,' _Manami decided, suppressing a grimace with great difficulty. _'I'd sell each and every airheaded clueless cheerleader or cheerleader-wannabe at school into slavery.'_

Ukyo smiled, whipped up the requested order, boxed it up, and handed it over. "My pleasure," she said cheerfully. Then, her gaze shifting from the girls to some vision hidden in the middle distance, she repeated softly, "My pleasure..."

* * *

Ranma cast a nervous glance up the stairwell. From where he stood he could only catch a glimpse of the sky, but it was enough to set off the warning bells. "Huh. That don't look so good."

After a few seconds, the reply came. "What? Did you say something, Ranchan?"

"Yeah. Look at the sky." By now the two had moved far enough up the stairs to get a better view of the clouds. Ranma instinctively slowed down and Ukyo unconsciously adjusted her pace to match his. "Sure looks like it's gonna rain. Wonder what that'll mean for the meeting."

He and Ukyo had officially joined the astronomy club after school on Monday, with Tuesday's meeting the first they attended. Ranma and Ukyo both had been surprised to find out what the astronomy club actually did when they got together. "Yeah, me too," she agreed, thankful for the moment's distraction. She'd spent enough time over the past sixteen hours pondering something, and was frankly ready for a break. "So why is everyone still heading to the roof? They better not have set the equipment up anyway. I doubt even the Kunos could scrape up enough yen to replace it if it gets rained on."

"Nah, it's no big deal," said a straggling fellow club member as he passed them on the way up. Neither Ranma nor Ukyo had any idea of his name; this was only their fourth meeting, and so far they'd been too busy adjusting to the general strangeness to worry about social niceties. "Rainy days aren't a problem for us. Not even for you and your curse, Saotome. Come on, this is something you don't wanna miss." He headed away, out of the stairwell and onto the roof.

Ranma and Ukyo were now the only club members still sheltered inside. They exchanged dubious looks, simultaneous shrugs, and started walking again. "Maybe they've got Plexiglas minibooths set up over the telescopes or something," Ukyo speculated. "After all, the crazy things work just fine during the daylight. Once you get the right filter settings, anyway, which still blows my mind to think about."

He snorted. "You think _that's_ impressive? Yesterday I zoomed in for a close-up of that big red storm on Jupiter, and I hit a few random keys, and managed to filter it out too. It was really weird seeing the ground underneath it all churning up like that."

"Well, that beats anything I've gotten these bad boys to do for me," Ukyo said as they stepped out onto the roof. "Speaking of which, I see they don't have cover for them after all. And it looks like they've got a lot more of them set up than usual." Although the extra telescopes all seemed to be concentrated in one big clump on the other side of the roof, in the middle of which stood their illustrious captain, upperclassman Kaito.

"Geez, you wouldn't think they'd get out even more of them if there was any kind of risk," Ranma commented. "Maybe they're so advanced, they're actually waterproof?"

"Don't know how that would figure in with what that guy said, about your curse not being a problem," she answered. "Well, if it does start raining, I'll ditch the club with you and go back home so you've got a place to change."

"It will not be necessary," said a soft-spoken voice that sent chills down Ranma's spine. He turned and confirmed that Kaito—he didn't know the upperclassman's last name—was still where he'd been a moment ago. The other boy was as thin as Gosunkugi, but creepy in a way that the voodoo student had never managed. There wasn't anything threatening about him, per se, but somehow he always managed to exude a nagging sense of wrongness... and it didn't much help to hear him speak this softly and yet have the words clearly understandable at this distance.

"The telescopes are indeed waterproof," he continued, "but why should our fellow students suffer a drenching to use them?" He gestured at the cluster of instruments around him. "I have switched these over to radar mode, boosted the output by several thousand percent, made the necessary adjustment to the filtration system, and slaved them all to the same control panel. And now..." He pressed a series of buttons on the controls of the nearest scope. The instruments began to hum with the noise of active use. Ranma thought he caught the hint of a glow at the skyward end of the nearest one.

Then, with no further ado, it began to rain. Hard.

Ukyo stood in silence for she didn't know how long. Eventually, though, she said, "Ranma honey?"

"Yeah?"

"Is it just my imagination... or is the rain shoving itself to the side so as not to share the roof with us?"

"The radar waves resonate with the moisture in the clouds and force them to dump it now," Kaito explained, still standing fifteen meters away, still speaking in his usual soft tones, still clearly audible even over the hiss of the downpour. "And the shape formed by the projected waves causes the rain to bend as well."

* * *

Five hundred feet higher and two miles to the west, Shampoo checked her airspeed and tried to concentrate harder. _' Am I imagining this? ' _she wondered. _' Something feels... weird. But it's so faint... is it just in my head? '_

It had seemed like a good idea at the time. Her great-grandmother had kept a close eye on Ranma's progress in the snicker Flight of the Plucked Chicken. Her husband had not quite mastered it yet, but Cologne had told her that she fully expected him to do so during their next training session. If that was so, then he would beat Shampoo's own time by one day. The majority of Shampoo was pleased at the thought, happy for her beloved's triumph, but there had been one little nagging corner wishing she could have at least tied with him in this one arena.

That voice had been silenced quite effectively when the Matriarch broke the news to her about how well Shampoo's own learning time stood up against that of Amazons past. Learning that not only would the Air style help her in her cursed form, but that her cursed form helped her with the style, had come under the heading of serious good news. Ranma would think so too, she was sure of it. Now flying wasn't just a great way to enjoy oneself, it was actually highly effective training to boot! Take that, Tendos, if you ever try to complain about him getting away from you for the day!

She had devoted this afternoon to expanding on the idea, had gone into this flight focusing as much of her conscious thought and attention as she could on the air itself. Shampoo had hoped that doing so might teach her new things, might lead to greater understanding of her chosen element. She knew there were heights she hadn't even glimpsed yet, understood far better than Ranma how far the style could take its devotees. The Matriarch had made this clear to her after she'd mastered the Buzzing Fist, shown her how small a first step it really was, but at the same time filled her full of determination to learn more.

Right now she was wondering whether the lesson to learn today was that she just didn't know enough yet. She felt, or thought she felt, the barest hint of wrongness, of oddity, of something out of place. It wasn't very far away (at least, as a falcon reckons air distance), but it seemed to be coming from an area with unpleasant flying conditions. The wind wasn't blowing hard and there was no hint of thunder, but the clouds were heavy with rain. _'I don't want to fly through that,' _Shampoo thought, although at the same time the avian Amazon had already curved her flight to bring her around in the direction of the anomaly. Maybe she would just go far enough to figure out whether she was really feeling anything, then turn aside before she actually had to go through any rain.

By the time she'd covered a mile, her suspicion had deepened to near-certainty. The sensation was stronger now, and beginning to tickle the back of her mind with a tantalizing hint of familiarity. This was something she'd felt before, the Amazon thought. At least it felt like it. It was becoming hard to focus on it, though, since she had flown far enough to reach the fringes of rainfall. She could easily fly even with the water that beaded and slid over her feathers, but the immediacy of that sensation was making it hard to concentrate on the distant hint of discord.

Nodding decisively, Shampoo climbed for greater altitude. No need to endure the rain when she could fly over it.

* * *

Ranma shrugged and moved toward a telescope. He'd seen plenty of weirdness since coming to Nerima, but this club was taking the cake—at least as far as the nonthreatening stuff went. It was probably best to go with the flow. "Pretty convenient," he offered in Kaito's general direction. "You said the radar's what made it start raining now, instead of holding off until later? You think you could kick it up a few notches, enough to make sure the clouds rain themselves out completely by the time class is over?"

"Sorry, not enough telescopes," Kaito murmured. Raising his voice by at least half a decibel, the captain addressed everyone in the club. "I've already calibrated the remaining telescopes to filter out the falling rain, and put an administrative lock on that particular part of the setting. Tatsuki, please do not waste the period trying to reverse that."

"Aw, come on, Kaito," protested one of the freshman club members. "You have no idea how cool it is to filter out everything BUT the rain when it's pouring down like this. It's like... I don't know, like you're falling through a tunnel that's made up of a million different tunnels all going almost the same direction but they're not quite, and... and..." Words failed him for a moment, before he remembered a phrase from his Conversational English class. "It's just... 'out of this world'! And we are the astronomy club, after all!"

Kaito turned to stare directly at the underclassman. Even in the dimness his eyes were obscured by a dull gleam of light. Ranma suppressed a shiver. It wasn't so bad to see that effect on somebody wearing glasses, but Kaito's face was as bare as the surface of the moon.

"Man, I bet it takes real skill to do that with contact lenses," remarked a nearby girl.

"No kidding," replied her friend. "Even those freaky tinted ones he wears."

Ranma blinked as the words filtered through his mind. He shook his head and turned away from Kaito's flat stare and Tatsuki's continued whining. "Let's see," he mumbled as he peered into the telescope's viewfinder. "What do I want to look at today?" It was a rhetorical question; the telescopes were by far the most advanced technology he'd ever come in contact with, and ease-of-use was not one of their strong suits. There was a keypad that allowed you to enter all kinds of instructions, each of which was conveniently displayed as he typed it out, the glowing translucent characters popping up within the field of vision inside the viewfinder... but whatever language it was, it was nothing he'd ever seen before, each character consisting not only of multiple curves and angles, but different colors as well. Kaito had merely said that figuring things out for himself was part of his duties as a member of the astronomy club. Ranma personally suspected Kaito had developed and programmed the code himself, after watching one sci-fi anime too many.

"Time to go with the old standby, I guess," he muttered, pointing the scope up at the nearest section of sky and beginning to enter commands at random. Black sky studded with stars... black sky studded with slightly brighter stars... comet blazing a streak across the emptiness, that was pretty cool but over too soon... giant red ball devouring a blackened cinder of a world, how depressing was that... whoah, _two_ comets, headed straight for each other... man, that explosion was even more impressive than the old freak's Happo Fire Bombs... falling through a tunnel made of a million different tunnels all going nearly the same direction...

"Please step away from the telescope, Ranma," Kaito said from six inches to his right.

Ranma jumped backwards, blurring as he covered ten feet in half a second. _'Geez, it's even creepier when he sneaks up on you like that.'_

Kaito, meanwhile, had taken Ranma's place at the telescope, peering through the viewfinder and entering commands with a swift familiarity that Ranma doubted he'd ever match, Amaguriken or no Amaguriken. "Well, Saotome, somehow you managed to not only turn off the rain filter, you completely disabled my ability to lock down ANY features on this telescope." Kaito gave him the flat, contact-lenses-gleaming stare. Ranma fought an urge to race to the roof's edge for transformation, flight, and freedom. Kaito kept up the stare for a moment longer, then pulled out a permanent marker and scrawled the kanji for 'Wild Horse' on the telescope. "From now on you use this one. The last thing this club needs is for you to unlock all the features on every one of our scopes. We would never get anything done if the students found out the equipment can filter through building walls into bath houses and locker rooms."

Ranma stared back at him for a long moment, then turned and regarded the rest of the rooftop. Judging by the number of students looking up through their telescopes, i.e. none, as opposed to the number currently staring wide-eyed at Kaito, which was to say everyone, the captain had forgotten how well his voice carried. "Well, I'd hate to be responsible for _that_," the pigtailed boy said sarcastically, stepping back to the telescope as Kaito walked away.

"Man, how'd I pull that off anyway?" he continued, muttering to himself softly enough that not even Ukyo, who was standing closest to him, was able to hear. Hopefully Kaito would be able to fix it when he had more time free to work on the problem. Being asked to pay for something as expensive as this thing surely was... somebody up there watching his life might get a nice cruel laugh out of it, but the joke didn't strike Ranma as funny. "It shouldn't even be possible to mess it up just by pushing random buttons. What kinda super-secret stolen alien technology is this supposed to be anyway?" Heh, that was a better joke.

The remaining students blinked as Kaito crashed to the roof in a perfectly executed facefault.

* * *

Shampoo stared thoughtfully down. She had covered the two miles of sky originally separating her from the disturbance she'd sensed. It was below her now, though not _directly_ below her; she had more sense than to fly into an unknown air disturbance, especially one she'd sensed from so far away. The sense of familiarity was stronger now. She flew in circles for a while, puzzling it out.

Eventually she made the connection. What she thought she felt was the effects of forced vibration, similar in many ways to the Buzzing Fist. Far more powerful, obviously, since she'd felt it from so far away, and there seemed to be other differences as well... but the Amazon was pretty certain of her conclusion nonetheless.

It wasn't hard to figure out a possible explanation, either. She had told her great-grandmother what she intended for this flight, and the Matriarch had given the idea her wholehearted approval. It was a very short step from that to Cologne setting out something like this as a test. No, Shampoo wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if it was Cologne, hidden away at ground level, producing this strange, penetrating vibration.

Well, if this was one of the Matriarch's tests, Shampoo wasn't about to fail it. She began her descent through the clouds, ignoring the rain as best she could. It would be nice to surround herself with a shell of dry air, but Shampoo knew she wasn't ready for something like that. Tamper with the very thing that was keeping her from falling? Maybe with a few years practice under her belt. She was reasonably confident that she _could_ create a pocket of vibrating air around her body large enough to keep away the rain... but what that might do to her wings was best not contemplated. Rain was only a metaphorical pain.

As she sank lower, the vibration became more pronounced, and eventually she was able to determine its effect. There was a ring of rain, far more dense than what she was flying through. The vibration seemed to be concentrated on the inner edge of that ring, extending further inward. Shampoo flew as close as she felt was safe, straining fledgling senses. The rain was extremely concentrated there... but inside the ring there wasn't any...? That was what the vibrating of the air was accomplishing... and now that she was this close, and had spent this much time studying the vibration, it felt wrong. Too regular, too even, too mechanical to be the result of Cologne's mastery. Her great-grandmother was powerful and controlled beyond Shampoo's understanding, but at the core of a master's skills were the pulse, the beat, the chaotic strength of life. She couldn't feel any trace of that here.

_' Maybe I should give this up, ' _Shampoo thought, even as she continued her slow descent. _' If this isn't something Great-Grandmother set up for me, then I probably should go back and get her to investigate. That has to be the smartest thing to do—! '_

Further rational thought was wiped out in an instant. Shampoo had finally flown low enough to make out what was on the other side of the hyperdense rain curtain. It was Furinkan! Was this some new threat after her Airen's hide!

Throwing caution to the winds, Shampoo dived to gain airspeed, then twisted and zipped through the wall of rain. She took an instant of unpleasant pounding and then she was through, regaining control of her flight and reorienting herself. Even though she'd expected the air to be rain-free, it was still bizarre to experience it.

Then she caught sight of Ranma. He seemed all right, no sign of turmoil or threats, no chance to stand by his side in battle. He was just staring into a strange mechanical tube pointed at the sky. So were all the other students on the roof, Shampoo quickly noted, and it seemed that because of this none of them had seen her.

Wait, there was one student who wasn't looking into her tube anymore. Shampoo's eyes narrowed as she watched Ukyo Kuonji turn away from the bizarre contraption and take a hesitant step toward _her_ husband. Shampoo was sorely tempted to bank in a hard turn, come in for a dive, maybe trim the girl's hair a bit with her beak. At the very least she could 'accidentally' shake enough water onto Ranma while flying overhead to defeat whatever the spatula girl was planning.

The only thing that held her back was the presence of all the other students. Not that Shampoo cared about them or would let them dictate her idea of acceptable action—but she knew Ukyo was much more inhibited (or as the Amazon thought of it, 'more like stupid Japanese way of never showing your real feelings'). Whatever the girl intended now with Ranma, surely it wouldn't be anything Shampoo needed to stop at all costs. And so, still undetected, the Amazon turned and came in for a landing atop the roof of the stairwell, crept to the edge, and watched.

* * *

_'Damn moral dilemmas,' _Ukyo thought. That one hesitant step toward Ranma seemed to have used up all her reserves of decisiveness. _'Ranchan, why'd you have to go out flying yesterday anyway? It was all so easy then, so clear and bright and uncomplicated. I'd go to you, I'd point out just what those Amazon laws really mean, you'd do the right thing and not keep Shampoo hanging any longer. She goes away, not happy but at least she can get on with her life, and things get better around here too.'_

All of that was still true; an evening, morning, and early afternoon of reflection hadn't picked any holes in it. No, the problem Ukyo was facing now was with something outside of those nice, simple, straightforward, it's-for-Shampoo's-own-good-to-get-this-out-of-the-way-now issues. _'It's like that girl said... with her handicap, Shampoo won't ever be able to snag Ranma honey for real. At least, not by his choice,'_ Ukyo thought with a glower. _'But that doesn't mean it won't have any effect at all, when she tries and tries so hard to get close to him. Hell, I've seen it already in just the last few weeks! She is getting closer... and that doesn't just affect her and Ranchan.'_

She hadn't forgotten it yet, what Ranma had said to her when talking about not going for the win by using Shampoo's curse. The words still echoed in her mind: _'I don't know, Ucchan, but I will tell you one thing I haven't seen. I haven't seen her try an' tell me which of my friends I could and could not spend time with. Akane does that a lot. You've seen it yourself, I know, and it just ends up with me going out behind her back. I'm even startin' to be glad that it's easier to do that now...'_

No, Ukyo didn't think she'd forget those words anytime soon, or Ranma's follow-up statement that he didn't want things between the two of them to proceed down that same path. Part of Ukyo felt guilty, to be so thankful that Shampoo's gambit had resulted in a greater distance between Ranma and Akane, but that part was dwarfed by the chef's practical side. Those two simply weren't right for each other. Sure, it was sad that Shampoo should pull them apart when the hopes driving her to do it were destined to be crushed, but that didn't make it any less in Ranma's own best interests. The sooner he and Akane realized they didn't have a future together, the sooner everyone could move on with their lives. And if that meant keeping quiet for a while longer, letting Shampoo believe she still had a chance so that the Amazon would continue prying her 'airen' away from her rival... well, if it was a question of what was good for Ranma vs. what was good for Shampoo, Ukyo knew which side she'd stand on.

That was what she told herself, but it didn't quite want to stick. A little voice in the back of her head continued to whisper that Shampoo had _already_ opened significant distance between Ranma and Akane, that the Amazon must surely be happily treasuring the increased closeness to him she'd gained. It might be good for Ranma to end things with Akane as speedily as possible, that voice agreed, but the bigger issue wasn't really in doubt, was it? It was only a matter of time, likely of much less time now than Ukyo would have dreamed six weeks ago. Not because of anything Ukyo had done, but because of Shampoo's actions combined with Akane's unquenchable jealousy. _'Hmmph. She never had to put up with her fiancé staying under another girl's roof,' _Ukyo thought, her train of thought taking a minor detour. _'Except for that one time with the Gambling King, of course.'_

Forcing away the infuriating memory of finding Genma and the Tendos camped out in her home, Ukyo refocused on the issue at hand. She stood there, pondering, questioning, searching, and seeking for a good five minutes. The sound of a falcon yawning was completely inaudible over the rain.

Eventually, though, she reached the point of decision. _'If I keep quiet and let things go on as they are, it's only going to be worse for Shampoo. A lot worse. She's finally making what she's gotta think is real progress. So yeah, I could let it go on like that, watch as she works her way farther in between Ranma and Akane, and wait to say anything until Akane's out of the picture for good. That might help Ranchan out a little... but it would mean dumping a truckload of pain and hurt on Shampoo. Wait to hit her when she's sitting on top of the world, thinking she's finally got everything going her way? Hurt her that much to maybe spare Ranma a little bit of pain?'_

With a determined shake of her head, Ukyo lurched into motion once more, crossing the remaining distance to Ranma and laying one hand on his shoulder. "Ranma honey, we... we need to talk."

* * *

_' That's it? Just talk? ' _Shampoo thought, blinking the boredom out of her eyes. _' She stood there that long, working up her courage, just for that? What's she going to say to him? No way will it be anything too personal. There's no way the spatula girl could pull that off with so many people around, even if they are all staring up through those things. '_

She settled down again, focusing, trying to make out everything Ukyo was saying. It wasn't easy. The force with which the chef spoke her initial phrase had carried it clearly to Shampoo's ears, but Ukyo had shifted to a lower tone to continue. Between the noise of the rain and the distance separating Ukyo from Shampoo's perch, the Amazon was having serious difficulty catching her words.

By the time she grasped the gist of what Ukyo was saying, it was much too late to intervene.

Unable or unwilling to believe what she had heard, eyes staring grimly forward, her whole body trembling with tension, Shampoo watched the conversation proceed. She only caught bits and pieces—questions, discomfort, sputtered half-denials from Ranma. From Ukyo, clarifications, grim repetitions, and above all the careful insistence that she wasn't telling him who he could and couldn't spend time with, wasn't trying to get Ranma to drop Shampoo out of his life for good. She just wanted him to see what was really at stake here, Ukyo said so earnestly, so honestly, so innocently. She didn't want Shampoo to get any more hurt than she had to, for thinking things were different from how they really were.

With that last line, the urge to take flight and shred the treacherous backstabbing witch left her, replaced by a much better plan. _'You not want Shampoo hurt for think things not how they really are?' _she mentally sneered in her rival's language. _'I follow you example. Is past time somebody learn how some things was for true.'_

* * *

A tiny hitch of breath caught in Shampoo's throat as she finally spotted her target. _' You're late, Ranma, '_ she thought distantly, watching from her higher vantage point as he leapt from the street to the top of a one-story building. _' I was beginning to wonder whether you were coming at all. '_

She waited and watched, tracking his progress as he moved over the rooftops. Her beloved was moving much slower than usual. Normally when he arrived at the Cat Café for a new bout of training, eagerness and determination practically radiated from him. This time, his features were an open book of uncertainty, confusion, and bitterness. _'You happy, Ukyo?' _Shampoo thought darkly, pretending she was speaking the words directly to the girl. _'Glad to see what you do to him? Too bad you not here to enjoy it while it last.'_

Forcing away the curdled sneer that those thoughts had brought with them, Shampoo took several deep breaths, chose her moment, and leapt down. She dropped to the roof tiles only five feet away from Ranma, landing as lightly as her former cursed form. "Nihao, Ranma," she said evenly as she closed the distance between them. "What is wrong? You not look happy to be coming for train with Shampoo."

Despite himself Ranma had taken a step backward, caught off-guard by her arrival. He'd known he wasn't ready for the encounter he was heading towards, and only the knowledge that skipping out on it would make things worse had kept him on his path. "That ain't it," he said after a long moment spent trying to scrounge up some opening remarks. Would it have been so hard for fate to have let him have those last few minutes to try and come up with what he was going to say! "Why'd you come looking for me? I'm only a few minutes late."

"Just wanted to talk, before you get to Cat Café and focus on training. Great-Grandmother say we can take as long as need."

Ranma blinked, a suspicion beginning to gnaw at the back of his mind. "Talk? About something important enough for that?" He supposed it could be a coincidence, that this was happening less than twenty-four hours after that talk with Ukyo, but it didn't seem likely. _'At least if that's it, it'll make it easier to get started talking about it.'_ "What did ya want to talk about?"

"Many thing," Shampoo said. "Start with school. How was it today? No stupid people try take advantage of curse? You glad is Saturday, only have half-day of class?"

Ranma shrugged, hiding the fact that—for the first time ever—the answer to that last question would be 'No'. He would have preferred a lot more time to think about the questions and issues Ukyo had raised the previous day. "Nobody tried nothing. I guess that's good."

"Shampoo glad." The Amazon scraped up a small, fake smile. "So, was better day than yesterday, yes? Better than yesterday late afternoon?"

He drew a deep breath, released it, then took another. "You already know about that, huh. How?"

"Felt something strange in the air while I flying, go to check it out, find rain making curtain around school but not falling on roof. Also find roof was where you were, Ranma, other students too." Shampoo's eyes narrowed. "And Spatula Girl. She not see me on top of roof over stairs, for sure she not hear me. I hear everything she say to you, though."

"Everything?" he echoed. "Why didn't you fly down and stop her?"

"What good that do?" Shampoo countered bitterly. "Sure, I could have fly down, slash her with beak or claws, could even have knock her off roof with full power Wind Strike. That really solve problem, yes? Stop her from talking about how horrible Amazons is, how they nothing but honorless bunch of bloodthirsty backward barbarian peoples who no belong in world of today. Stop her from saying that, no matter how far Shampoo have to go—that would really be smart thing to do."

"Well, I'm glad you didn't," Ranma said wearily. "What are ya gonna do instead?"

Shampoo held silent for a long moment, then gave a tiny shake of the head. This was too important to rush. Though her heart urged her to push forward as quickly as possible with the truth he needed to hear, her mind remembered the advice Cologne had given her so many weeks ago. Simply racing as fast as possible down the obvious path probably wasn't the best thing to do. Much better to talk things out more thoroughly than that, to learn more about what her beloved was really thinking and feeling. "That is question I ask you," she murmured. "She say all those things, she tell you throw Shampoo away as soon as can. I ask you what you going to do."

Ranma took even longer to answer her question than she had his. "If you heard everything she said, then that makes this easier on me," he said at last. He wasn't looking directly at Shampoo at the moment, and thus missed the way she paled and began trembling. "I heard Ucchan's opinion. I know what her take on things is. On the other hand, she's saying that based on what she knows... and she doesn't know everything. Neither do I, for that matter. So that's where I am, Shampoo. I need more information before I can make any kind of decision."

The Amazon released the breath she hadn't even realized she was holding. Her hand twitched toward an item secured within her blouse, stopping only once the specter of Cologne and her counsel rose up again. "I am glad you think right thing is listen to Shampoo before decide," she said quietly.

"Well, I've learned a few lessons, even if it took longer than it should've," he replied, speaking no louder. "You know what I've done so far about all this fiancée mess, Shampoo?"

"Seems like nothing," the Amazon admitted. "Can not do that forever, but is better than making too quick, bad choice."

"Damn straight," he replied, letting out a sardonic chuckle. "That's been my approach to anything outside of martial arts. I dealt with whatever crisis was in my face, and if there wasn't anything I just focused on the moment instead of what was down the road. And you know what's really crazy? That was actually the right thing to do, I just didn't carry it far enough. Didn't take advantage of the opportunities it gave me."

Shampoo blinked, thought about it, and nodded decisively. "Is true," she declared. "Should have take me on dates when I ask, and I guess Ukyo too, and you should have ask Akane. That way you have good time with Shampoo, have good time but just as friend with Spatula Girl, and recover from bruise from Akane eventually. You learn who is good choice for the future."

"Sounds like you already know something it took me a long time to figure out. I ain't saying anything about specifics, mind you," Ranma clarified. "But you're right... I shoulda been using this time to get more information, to learn the stuff I needed for when I was finally gonna decide something for real." He sighed. "It actually worked out pretty good like that with Pop, you know?"

"Huh? With father? No, Shampoo not know what you talking," she confessed.

"It goes all the way back to when we first moved in with the Tendos. As I'm sure you know, Pop was all for me an' Akane getting together right away, pushed us as much as he could. If I'd said I wanted it, he woulda been thrilled to have a priest there to marry us in less than a half-hour's time." Noting the dark clouds gathering on Shampoo's brow, Ranma picked up the pace of his explanation. "And you gotta know I didn't want that. Hell, I wouldn't have been ready for a step like that even with the best girl in the world. Pop and me spent so much time on the road, almost never making close friends or anything. How he coulda thought I was going to be ready for a fiancée, I'll never know."

"Ranma, Shampoo not know your father so well as you, but it not seem to me like he worry if you ready or not," she pointed out.

"Yeah, well, the point is he wanted it, I didn't. But..." Ranma paused to gather his thoughts and his courage, then said, "If he'd pushed hard enough... if he'd said, 'Do this or you're no son of mine'... I woulda caved in. I couldn't have sacrificed that much just to have my own way, even if it meant getting married to someone I barely knew who couldn't go half a day without pounding on me."

"No worry about that!" Shampoo said, more sharply than she intended. The last thing she wanted was for Ranma to give Genma that kind of hold over him. "He never do that for true, Airen. Prove that for sure when you wear Red Thread of Fate."

"Did he?" Ranma mused. "I still don't remember what happened while you had that stupid thing on me, and nobody ever gave me a real good explanation. I know I was determined to marry you. So Pop caved in then, showed he didn't have the guts to fight what I really wanted?"

"Is so," she declared. Then, thinking back over his tone, she wondered, "You not sound surprise. Already know that last part was true?"

"I figured it out during that business with those two girls who thought Mr. Tendo was their dad. Pop might not've realized it, but he basically admitted that I could break my engagement to Akane and he wouldn't fight it to the bitter end, or leave me afterward." Ranma dredged up the barest hint of a smile. "So that's one place where waiting, holding on to the status quo, was the right thing to do. It took a while, but now I know that no matter what choices I make, I ain't gonna lose my father because of them.

"I'd like to think that same strategy could work again," he continued. "If I thought it'd help, I could stall until your granny and the old freak both started acting their ages. But if that's only gonna make things worse, I gotta find another way."

"So kind of Spatula Girl to tell you just that," Shampoo said with a frown. "Say to you that you only hurting Shampoo, should tell me 'bie liao' right away. Say that is obvious I never give up being Amazon for you, and is just as obvious you never be happy to be part of such terrible, evil peoples."

"That's what she said," Ranma echoed. He wasn't sure what to make of it, that Shampoo was taking so long to begin countering it. That she had taken the time to hear more of what was on his mind, that she didn't seem desperate at all... was it a good sign? "What've you got to say?"

_' Surely that's enough about what's really on his heart right now, how he really took it when someone challenged him like that. '_ Regardless of whether or not her great-grandmother would agree, Shampoo wasn't waiting any longer to chase those dark clouds away. "Not _say _anything," she replied. At the same time she whisked a sheaf of papers out of her blouse and held it out to him.

_'Huh? She wrote it down instead? Why bother?' _He took them and unfolded them, struck once again by the odd neatness of Shampoo's handwriting. Ever since that ridiculous Martial Arts Calligraphy challenge he'd been aware that Cologne was working on Shampoo's written Japanese, that Shampoo could write the language much better than she spoke it. If this was something she wanted to communicate clearly to him, using the written word would work... but it seemed like a lot of wasted effort when they could just assume their cursed forms and get rid of the language barrier that way.

Ranma pushed the questions out of his mind as he began reading the missive. Shampoo watched, her face an impassive mask, her posture steady and confident, her tight-clenched white-knuckled hands hidden behind her back. It took several minutes for him to read the document all the way through. Then even longer for him to read it again, more slowly and carefully than before. Then there was the time it took for him to just stand there, blank-faced, staring off into the distance as if struck by lightning.

She waited for him to show signs of life before she made her next move. Once he did, once he began to stir out of his shocked trance, she leaned over and retrieved the papers from his hand. He blinked and twitched when she did so, but that was all the response he managed.

Not until she had pulled out a cigarette lighter and reduced the first page to ash did he truly come back to life. "W- wait a minute! I need... I can't... Shampoo, that wasn't anywhere near enough information!" He growled as she paid no apparent attention, merely reduced the next page to ash. "Would you please forget that for now and give me a real explanation!"

Shampoo cleared her throat loudly and emphatically, quickly sorted through the unburned pages, found the appropriate block of text, tore it out of the page, and handed it back to him. Ranma glanced over the sentence, then rolled his eyes. "Yeah, yeah, I read it already. 'The truth of this—' " Her hand over his mouth cut him off. She stared into his eyes with a Cheshire Cat grin to hide her own nervousness, waved a reproving finger, then pulled back and continued burning the papers. Ranma rolled his eyes. _'Okay, fine. I can't even say 'the truth of this matter must never be spoken of outside Amazon lands'? You don't want it talked about even that much? Fine, we won't 'talk' about it at all.'_

He waited until she had consigned the last page to the flames. Then, dropping the scrap of paper, his hand shot out at Amaguriken speed to Shampoo's side, grasping the canteen dangling there. Ranma supposed it was a security measure to give her a quick escape if she got into a situation that called for it, but here and now it would serve a different purpose.

Pulling the canteen away and up between them, his other hand came around and down to smash through the plastic, sending cold water spraying in a three-sixty degree arc. The Amazon had just enough time to shift from surprised to exasperated before their human forms melted away. It was Shampoo's turn to roll her eyes, once she had extricated herself from her clothing. "If you'd waited all of five seconds longer, I would have changed us without needing to buy a new flask afterwards. Was that too much to ask?"

"Well, maybe if you'd told me to wait for that instead of just shutting me up manually," he grumbled back.

Shampoo gave him a hooded stare. In her human form, it would have been sultry enough to have Ranma gulping nervously, but on a falcon it just looked odd. "I could have covered your lips with something else, you know. Something that would have left both my hands free." Her tone more than made up for the deficiency in her expression.

"Um... I... that is..." Ranma gave his head a quick forceful shake. "Look, never mind about teasing and kissing and stuff like that!"

"Kissing?" Shampoo interjected, quick as a wink. "I didn't say that. Nice to know that's what you're thinking, though... husband."

Ranma stammered futilely for several more moments, before regaining enough composure to make a semi-coherent comeback. "The heck you didn't. Isn't this whole thing about a kiss!"

This should have been the point where Shampoo knocked him off balance once again with the biggest, naughtiest smile she'd ever managed. She certainly tried. However, due to the restrictions posed by a beak, all she achieved was a minor facial muscle cramp.

Ranma continued, picking up speed in the face of Shampoo's unexpected temperance. "Do you seriously expect to just drop a thunderbolt like that on me out of the blue, hand me something like that to read over a couple of times and then that's the end of it!"

"No, I don't, and when did I say that anyway?"

"Uh, maybe when you took the papers back and started burning them, without answering questions or even letting me ask them?"

"What was I supposed to do, let you carry something like THAT back to the Tendo home?" Shampoo rolled her eyes. "Silly Ranma. You _did_ read all of it, didn't you?"

"Of course I did! But that doesn't mean I can believe it!"

Shampoo froze, staring wide-eyed at him, unable to keep up her good cheer in the face of this. No words came for several seconds, and when they did shock and hurt were equally plain to be heard. "You... you don't... you think I'm lying to you? About something as big as this?"

"Arrgh! No! That's not what I meant!" Ranma squawked, wishing there was some kind of impassioned gesture he could make that wouldn't just look stupid in his current form. Shampoo's posture thawed a little, becoming more open as she waited for him to continue. It was his turn to spend several moments searching for words.

"Look," he said cautiously at last. "Think about when you came back last month, when we went off alone so you could show me your new curse. I was surprised, right?"

"Of course you were," Shampoo replied, wondering where he was going with this.

"It took me awhile to really get it through my head, just how much things had changed. Right?"

"Of course it did."

"Right." Ranma took a deep breath. "And you just hit me with something that's about twenty times bigger, and I'm supposed to smile and accept it just like that?"

Shampoo blinked. "That's what you meant by 'can't believe it'?"

Ranma nodded. "You got it."

"Okay, fine, my mistake. Stupid curse, you're supposed to prevent these kinds of misunderstandings," she grumbled under her breath.

"I don't even see why we needed to change," he said. "Well, okay, the translation thing ought to make it easier to talk about this stuff. But would it really have been such a big deal in our normal bodies? I understand that it's a big secret and all, but it's not like there's anybody around to overhear."

"Humor me, okay?" Shampoo said. "This is just about the biggest, most important Amazon secret of all. If there are others that are more important, I don't know them. This one... we learn from birth to keep quiet about it. It's worked for I don't know how many thousand years, but it's only good as long as the rest of the world doesn't know what the Kiss of Death really is. Even if Great-Grandmother gave me permission to tell you about this... even though you mean more to me than every Amazon law on the books... AND even in our cursed bodies... it's still not easy to talk about."

"I, I understand, I guess... but I still need more than what you've given me so far." The words were little more than a whisper, and apologetic as well, but he meant every one.

"All right. It's too late anyway to start refusing you anything," Shampoo joked feebly.

"Uh... yeah." That was all he said for the next ninety seconds.

"Ranma?" Shampoo eventually asked, breaking the silence for him. "Didn't you want to talk about this?"

"I did. I do. I'm just trying to find where to start."

"Okay. Take your time." Shampoo settled down and began humming the Amazon version of One Hundred Bottles Of Beer On The Wall, wondering whether the Jusenkyo translation effect extended far enough for Ranma to pick up on the joke.

Twenty-nine swords had been forged and broken in battle by the time Ranma spoke again. "...I guess I really just need to hear you tell me this. Seeing it written down... yeah, sure, it explains the rule, but that isn't enough to really connect it to me. To you. To us. Whatever."

This was actually easier than it might have been; basically, he was asking for a conversation that she'd fantasized about many times in the past. Of course, those fantasies had included the two of them safely back in the Amazon village and Ranma fully accepting and happy in their marriage, so many of the specifics were going to have to be tweaked now. Ruthlessly Shampoo pushed away the last twinges of guilt at breaking yet another law for Ranma, and began. "Back in China, did you notice how I never attacked without any warning at all? That I never came out of nowhere to hit you when you weren't ready? Didn't you wonder why I only caught up with you during the daytime? Did you ever stop and think about just what the law said, and what I was doing, and how those things didn't really go together at all?"

"Wait. What?" Ranma interrupted. "Those first questions at least made sense, even if it'd be nice to have a minute to stop and think about them. But that last thing? What's that supposed to mean?"

_' I guess it's only in my dreams that he understands right away what I'm saying, ' _Shampoo thought with a mental sigh. Aloud, she said, "Okay, let's take it slow. What was the law, according to what the Jusenkyo guide told you?"

"He didn't actually say anything about a law. He just said Amazons give the Kiss of Death to an outsider girl who beats them, and then track her down and kill her."

Shampoo waved one wing in an airy gesture. "Fine, close enough, think about the book of Amazon Law I showed you in Japan."

"Um... that's the same thing. Well, okay, almost the same thing. It's saying an Amazon has to do that, the guide just said that's what you do. What's the difference?"

"You're getting bogged down in unimportant details, Ranma. Think about it this way. An outsider defeats an Amazon. Who's the better fighter?"

"That would be me," Ranma said, still waiting for Shampoo to start making some sense.

"Let's use a real girl for this example. We don't need this getting confused."

"Too late," he interjected with a whistling sigh.

"No, it's not. It's perfectly simple! Look, an Amazon gets defeated by an outsider because the outsider was better or stronger than her, or at least roughly equal. And then, right in the middle of Amazon home territory, the defeated warrior tells the outsider that she's going to kill her... and then lets the woman run off? So that she can wait and fight her again... this woman who already defeated her once... on unfamiliar ground when the other one is fighting for her life? Tell me, Ranma, just how much sense does that make?"

"Not as much as what was written on those papers, I guess," he admitted after several thoughtful moments had passed. "But it's still hard to push out the old idea and replace it with this new one. I mean... it was just a test? All of it? Each time I ran away from you again, I was just failing worse and worse?"

"If you really had been a woman, yes. But that's not true, so it wasn't a good test. A man in a woman's body, who's only just been cursed with that body... of course he's not going to relate to women the same as they do to themselves. You weren't being a coward when you ran from me instead of standing your ground and facing me like a woman."

"Thanks, I think," he said dryly. "And it's not like I knew that at the time. What if I hadn't run, all the way back at the village? Or at least if I'd stood up to you that first time you caught up with Pop and me?"

"Then you'd have learned that the Kiss of Death really was just a test, and I'd have welcomed you in as a new Amazon sister, and gotten the biggest shock of my life several weeks earlier," Shampoo said. Her tone shifted from humorous to wistful as she continued, "And we might even have a child by now..."

"Uh, yeah, getting back to the law..." Ranma squawked.

"What more do you need to hear? Isn't it plain enough now? It's no dishonor to lose to a worthy foe stronger than yourself. In fact, it's even a source of pride when it leads to the tribe getting a strong new sister."

"And if it's some kind of fluke and you get beaten by a coward who got lucky or something, you chase her down 'to the ends of the earth', push her and push her until she finally breaks down, stops running, and begs for her life. Then you can take payment out of her hide for your loss, use the Xi Fang Gao to keep her from spreading the word that she got a Kiss of Death but the Amazon didn't follow through on it, and head back home with your honor restored. Or if you think she showed enough potential even in the middle of running like a rabbit, you can drag her back to the village as a slave for a year and let the elders try to hammer her spirit into shape to where she can join the tribe anyway." Ranma finished his summary of the law he'd read, and frowned. "Obviously that's better than what I originally thought, but it still seems kinda ugly."

"What, the 'taking it out of her hide' part?"

"No, the slavery bit."

Shampoo shrugged. "The choice is up to the Amazon, so it's not as if the law itself is harsh. Keep in mind that in this situation, 'slavery' is just another word for 'training'. Plus, if she does take the outsider back, that's as good as telling all her sisters that she thinks this is a warrior who can become a credit to the tribe with enough work. She's putting her own honor back on the line to do it."

"So that's what you were planning for me, right?" Ranma said, unsure how to feel about it. With Shampoo's clarification the Amazon response no longer seemed so very unreasonable, as long as it really was being dealt out to some talented coward who went around pretending to be a martial artist. On the other hand, given that he himself had been on the wrong end of a Kiss of Death, it was hard not to take it a little personally.

"Um... no. Not once you made it all the way to Japan. You were just too good at running away," Shampoo admitted. "I figured you'd give me the slip on the way back and disappear again."

"So you were gonna corner me, make me beg, and give me a good beating to finish things off."

"Just the first two. If the Amazon doesn't take the outsider back, what she does instead to settle the personal debt is completely up to her. I was planning to wait until you were on your knees in tears, pleading with me to spare you, then thump your nose and say 'Okay'. I'd even bought a disposable camera so I could show the look on your face to everyone back at the village."

"Very funny," he groused.

"No, it really isn't," she replied quietly. "Not that we had such a big misunderstanding right at the start. Not that so many unfair things have dropped on you and me so often. But it's better to try to laugh than scream or cry, isn't it? To take happiness where you can find it."

"Maybe. Yeah, actually that does sound right. But you know what's even better?"

"Better?" she echoed. "No, what?"

"Getting rid of the misunderstandings and the confusion and the stuff that keeps tripping us over and over." Ranma arched his back, spread his wings, and flapped them as if to emphasize his point. "Like you started when you went back to Jusenkyo so we could switch out our curses. Like I've been trying to do, trying to think things through and make better choices than I have before. Like we're doing right here and now, talking about what your laws really mean. There's been times when I've worried that some three thousand year old thing I didn't know about was gonna sneak up and bite me in the butt."

"Well, what would you like to know? Great-Grandmother told me I could take as much time for this talk as I needed, that she could get back to your training tomorrow if we don't have time for it today. But we'd need a lot longer than an afternoon for me to tell you everything about Amazon life. So probably you should just ask me whatever questions you have."

_'Okay,' _he realized, _'this has gotta be the best chance I'll ever get. All that stuff I was wondering about ever since yesterday, all that time I spent worrying what Amazon Law would do to Shampoo if I didn't marry her after all, I can get those answers now. Heck, I don't even have to make it that personal, I can just ask it like a general question. All right, time to finally find out some stuff I should have learned right at the start.'_

He opened his mouth, and was distantly surprised to hear himself say, "Is there anything else weird about the real meaning of the Kiss of Death?"

"Actually, yes," Shampoo answered after her own pause. "Not weird, just different. It's optional outside of Amazon lands." Noting the surprised look on Ranma's face, she explained, "After all, the whole point is to test the spirit of the outsider woman who just defeated an Amazon. Suppose the outsider was in her late twenties, the Amazon was in town to celebrate her fifteenth birthday, and they were in the middle of Beijing where the only people who really know to fear the Chinese Amazons are the top-level communist dogs. Not running after you get a kiss and a death threat from a hung-over girl half your age isn't the biggest proof of courage."

_'Well, that's interesting, but it's not that important right now.'_ "What if the Amazon did it anyway? Would the woman still officially be an Amazon even if the test wasn't worth much?"

"Yes, providing she was willing to come live in our lands for awhile. People older and wiser than our hypothetical fluff-brained girl would check her out, and if her spirit wasn't good enough they'd give her hell until she shaped up or renounced her place in the tribe." Shampoo giggled. "Although I shouldn't say hypothetical. That actually happened with a girl I knew, except that the outsider Mei Ling turned out to be a wonderful new sister right from the start. That didn't stop us from teasing Lotion for a solid year, of course."

Ranma chuckled as well at the story, though at the same time he was inwardly berating himself. _'Quit chickening out! It's kinda funny and interesting to hear these things, but they can wait for later. There's no reason to put it off any longer, just spit it out already! 'What'll happen to you if we don't get married after all?' How hard is that to say?'_

Clearing his throat, he said, "And, uh... Shampoo."

"Mm-hm?"

Another moment of silence, pushing himself to the moment of truth, and then he asked, "What about the Kiss of Marriage?"

Shampoo blinked. "What about it? What are you asking, exactly?"

Ranma opened his beak to answer. The words wouldn't come.

"...Ranma?" she asked after several silent seconds.

_'I can't say it... I actually cannot get the words out... What's going on here?'_ he wondered, confused and slightly afraid. _'It shouldn't be that hard. Okay, maybe it is gonna hurt her to bring it up, but isn't that better than to just go on letting it slide? It ain't like I'm trying to tell her flat-out that I won't, I just need to know what would happen. Just like a little while ago, she won't understand at first, she'll be hurt, and I'll have to explain what I really meant...'_

Understanding replaced confusion and fear. _'The heck with that. I can ask Cologne next time the Tendos call for a ramen insurance delivery when I'm at the restaurant training.'_ He'd never expected to feel thankful that Soun had started checking up to make sure Shampoo wasn't meeting him when he told them he was going out to fly. Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday had seen his training interrupted when Soun called the Cat Café for a delivery order. Each time Shampoo had delivered the ramen with all due speed and spent several minutes afterward poking around, pretending to check whether Ranma was really out or the Tendos were just hiding him.

He didn't doubt that the Tendo patriarch would keep it up, which meant there would be time soon enough to ask the Matriarch that question without hurting Shampoo in the process. "Yeah, the Kiss of Marriage. Is the same thing true for it? Is it also optional outside of Amazon lands?"

Shampoo opened her mouth to respond, only to contract her own case of sudden silence. "Uh, I didn't think it was a hard question," Ranma said, conveniently ignoring how long it had taken him to spit it out.

The avian Amazon's beak closed with a click. She blinked twice before her gaze refocused on him. Ranma stirred uneasily, wondering whether her eyes were really gleaming so much brighter than before. Surely it was just a trick of the light. "Yes?" he prompted. "No? Maybe? Only on Tuesdays and Thursdays?"

"Tell you what, Ranma. I'll answer that question..." and now the tone of her voice made it very clear—he wasn't imagining that mischievous gleam at all. "If you can catch me!"

With no further ado, the pink-and-purple peregrine blasted into the air. The wind of her passage from roof to sky sent Ranma tumbling backwards, dizzily aware that she must have invoked an Air technique to get such a massive response. By the time he'd cleared his head enough to take to the air himself, Shampoo was five hundred feet higher and soaring in lazy mocking circles.

"You'll have to do better than that!" she called as he closed the distance. Suddenly the air was filled with unpredictable cross-breezes and downdrafts, none powerful enough to threaten him, but the whole more than sufficient to slow his progress to a crawl. "Last time we flew together you might have been able to keep up with me, but that was then and this is now! I've got a lot of new tricks up my sleeve!"

"Tricks up your sleeve? What, are you stealing Mousse's lines now?" Ranma called back. He watched with immense satisfaction as the taunt reduced Shampoo's smooth flight to a shocked, floundering struggle. More importantly, the mischievous winds fighting his progress instantly disappeared. Ranma sped up to maximum, nearly closing the gap completely before Shampoo rallied enough to catch him off-guard with a massive rising gust.

Even as he rocketed up, toward, then past her, he was laughing with exhilaration. He'd been braced for a return of the downdrafts, of winds that would have tried to keep him from getting any closer to his target, and she'd caught him off-guard by using the exact opposite tactic. This was just what he needed after that roller-coaster ride of a conversation. "Challenge accepted, Shampoo!" he called out, banking into a dive. "I can use a good flight after that much heavy stuff. Try not to lose too fast!"

* * *

Shampoo breathed in deeply, savoring the scents of the forest. She settled herself a little more comfortably on the branch. It wasn't the same thing as being home again in the Bayankhala Mountains of China, but it was a nice diversion from the teeming masses of Tokyo.

"Stop stalling, Shampoo," Ranma teased. "I won fair and square. Ain't there a question you're supposed to be answering?"

The company was nice, too.

Shampoo cocked her head to the side and gave him the most innocent look she could manage. "Question? What question? You're not still talking about the Kiss of Marriage and whether it's required or optional, are you?"

"Uh, yes, I am. You said you'd tell me if I caught you, and I did." Even if it had taken him two hours to do it. Shampoo's flying skills were _almost_ as good as his, and her ability to influence the winds had put the advantage decidedly in her court. He hadn't been able to catch her until their flight took them all the way to this forest, but once there were enough trees obscuring things he'd been able to take her by surprise, brush the knuckles of his talons against the top of her head, and emerge triumphant in the face of yet another challenge.

_' I wonder if he even suspects that I took it into the forest to let him win, '_ Shampoo mused. _' Probably not. Although it is true I was running low on strength. '_ It took a lot less energy to whip up a wind that could disrupt a falcon's flight, as opposed to the kind of force needed to stop a human opponent in combat, but three hours of evading Ranma had taken their toll just the same. The Amazon had decided it would be better to let him win on her terms, rather than pushing it farther and leaving the both of them utterly exhausted. Aloud, she said, "Oh, yeah, that. I didn't think I needed to say anything; you already guessed the answers."

"Well, which one was it? Wait, 'answers'?"

"Mm-hm. Yes and no."

From his perch one branch over, Ranma gave her a flat stare. Then, pushing away his own weariness, he fluttered into the air once more, lightly bonked her with one set of closed talons, and settled down a few inches away from her. "Tag. I got you again. Could you maybe answer the question for real now?"

"Oh, all right," Shampoo said with a mock pout. "Anyway, like I said, yes and no. If an outsider male defeats an Amazon outside of Amazon lands, there can be some room for her not to give him the Kiss. It all depends on the situation. If it was an honest defeat, a real test of skill and strength for both fighters, then she is definitely expected to do it." She cleared her throat. "On the other hand, if an Amazon was busy intimidating someone else and the outsider male took her by surprise, she would be free to use her own judgment."

"Um... right." Ranma thought that one over for awhile. At last, he tentatively asked, "Did you ever regret it?"

"Yes, of course, with all my heart," Shampoo said as matter-of-factly as she could. She waited just long enough for Ranma to give a strangled "Urk!", stagger back off the branch, and struggle to land and stabilize himself on another perch farther down. "Just that one time when I was wearing the Reversal Jewel, though."

"Oh, yeah... that," Ranma said, as flustered as Shampoo had seen in a long time. She snickered as she watched him resettle his ruffled feathers.

After that a thoughtful, companionable silence stretched between them for a long time. Each was tired enough to welcome a peaceful moment to rest, and both had plenty to think about.

It was Ranma who eventually broke the silence, after flying back to her branch. "Thanks for telling me all this, Shampoo. It... it's really good to hear, you know? Because up until yesterday, I was pretty confident that I was finally making real progress in my life, moving things along to something better than before. Ukyo kind of kicked that theory's butt, but now I guess I can pick it up, dust it off, and take it back to the bank. Things _are_ getting better for real."

"I'm glad you think so too," she answered. Then, her eyes narrowing as her gaze shifted away from him toward the general direction of Nerima, she muttered, "Speaking of kicking butts..."

"Hold on, there," Ranma requested. "I know you were mad. I woulda been too, in your place. That doesn't make it all right for you to take it out of Ucchan's hide, though."

"Why not?" Shampoo wanted to know, her eyes still narrowed dangerously and now staring straight at him.

"Because it wasn't as bad as you're making it out to be," he declared. "Yeah, the stuff she said must have hurt you to hear it, but that wasn't what she was trying to do. She really believed what she was telling me, and part of that was that doing what she said would hurt you less. It's not her fault she got it all wrong."

Shampoo opened her mouth to reply, then stopped and considered what he had just said. Considered as well the nature of much of Ukyo's message, the things that her husband had just admitted were simply not true. _' Everything she said was wrong? Even the parts about how we weren't right for each other at all? Are you finally ready to say it out loud, even just a little? '_ "Do you really mean that, beloved?" she asked, tenderly, wistfully, hopefully.

_'Why's she saying it like that?'_ he wondered, hearing those emotions loud and clear in her tone. '_Oh well, at least she ain't angry or hurt or nothing.'_ "Yeah, I do. So don't go squash her with a Hurricane Haymaker or nothing, Shampoo," he said as firmly as he could. "It's going to be enough of a pain trying to tell her why I'm not doing anything she suggested, since I can't explain how she was working with bad information. Unless you could maybe see your way clear to writing one of those notes for Ucchan too...?"

"Did you just ask me to threaten a three thousand year old secret... something that we count on for bringing in new sisters... just to make things more convenient with the spatula girl?"

"A simple 'no' would have done just fine there," Ranma grumbled back. "Okay, I got you, but that doesn't make it any easier for me to know what I'm supposed to say to her."

Shampoo flapped her wings in an approximate shrug. "Just tell her that if she trusts you, she won't push you on it." Ukyo probably would do just that, but Shampoo doubted such a tactic would silence the questions even out of the chef's mind. _' Hmmph. Let her wonder and worry why Ranma didn't throw me away even after she told him to. That will be enough for now. '_

"Maybe. Guess I just need to take some time to think about it." Speaking of thought, and the best opportunities he had to indulge in it... "It's getting late, Shampoo. You ready to head back now?"

"All right," she agreed. The two took to the skies, flying slowly and letting the winds do all the work. Neither said anything until they'd left the forest behind. When Shampoo did speak again, it was in thoughtful tones with just a hint of underlying mischief. "I'm glad we got this time together, Ranma. To talk about important things, and to fly together without talking at all. Do you think it was worth it too? Even though you had to miss your training for today?"

"Yeah, it was nice," he agreed. "It was worth it. Even though I bet I would have finally beaten that stupid harness and its disintegrating feathers today."

"I'm sure you would have," she agreed. "But tomorrow's training will be soon enough for that." Mischievous good cheer had completely replaced thoughtfulness now. "Especially since it will mean you took the same number of days to do it as I did, instead of one less."

* * *

"Today's gonna be the day," Ranma said to no-one in particular as he vaulted through the air. "The day I master that stupid training exercise and move on to some real stuff." He landed, paused, shook his head. "Eight days from start to finish, same as Shampoo from what she said. Bet she won't let me forget that anytime soon."

His words might be rueful, but his tone and smile put the lie to them. Unlike Shampoo, he'd had to sneak over for a few hours of training at a time, and he hadn't even been able to do that every day. He might end up taking the same number of days to master the Flight of the Plucked Chicken as she had, but Ranma knew his total hours were well under hers. He'd just remind her of that if she ever crowed too much.

As good as he was feeling right now, though, Ranma didn't particularly want to burst her bubble. Yesterday he had walked slowly and somberly toward the Cat Café, taking to the rooftops only when he had to. Today he hadn't bothered with the street at all, and he definitely wasn't dragging his heels. _'No need for Shampoo to come looking for me today,'_ he thought. _'Though it might be kind of funny if she did anyway, to try and delay me for one more day. Bet she'd really like to say she took one less day to master something than I did, hold that over my head for who knows how many years. Well, sorry, Shampoo, ain't gonna happen.'_

The very instant that he finished the thought, he caught a glimpse of an approaching figure, descending through the air toward his current rooftop. Even though only visible in his peripheral vision, the curves beneath the skin-tight clothing were obviously female. _'Okay, am I suddenly developing a sixth sense—oh, crap.'_ This last came as Ranma skidded to a stop and focused fully on the newcomer, whose final leap had brought her down to share the rooftop with him.

Tight, skimpy clothing... check. Lithe form... check. Excellent figure... check. Raven-black hair, violet eyes, face much more composed than the last time he'd seen her... most definitely not Shampoo, and it was suddenly looking possible that the Amazon's record might stand after all. _'How the heck did she catch me anyway?'_ Ranma thought desperately, freezing at the sight of Kodachi.

She was standing just as still as he was. Her landing had set her down ten feet away from him, and the Black Rose seemed in no hurry to close the distance. She was just standing there, staring at him, leaning slightly forward with her hands behind her back. Her face was a smooth, impersonal mask, showing no emotion. Ranma suspected his own was fairly screaming uneasiness, not that he supposed Kodachi was likely to notice. "Kodachi," he ventured after thirty silent seconds had passed. "Did ya want something?"

"Did I want something... did I want one thing," she murmured, pulling back to a straight-upright pose and bringing one hand around and up, the heel resting against her chin, her forefinger extended thoughtfully up toward her temple. "Yes, one thing, but I don't think you can give it to me, Ranma."

"Uh, okay." Ranma thought for a minute about what that could be. Simple enough to think of something Kodachi wanted from him that he wasn't about to give, but it wasn't quite so easy to imagine her realizing that last part was true. "...What is it?" he asked after letting the silence stretch for another uncomfortably long time.

"Wednesday. Today needs to be Wednesday," Kodachi answered, looking away from him to stare at an electric billboard displaying the time. "It needs to be last Wednesday."

"Last Wednesday?" he echoed. _'Let's see, that was... yeah, that was when she saw me change.'_ "Why then?"

"Today should be Wednesday, and I should still be waiting for you on top of that building, and my dear, deluded brother should still be gagged and bound. The water should still be in the buckets." Kodachi began trembling. "You should... you should still be... everything should still be..."

"Kodachi..." he began, trying to find more words.

"I WILL NOT DO THIS!" Kodachi reared her head back and screamed the words, all her poise vanishing in an instant. Ranma jumped reflexively back, almost going over the side of the roof. "It happened! It was real! It shouldn't have been, shouldn't be, but I saw it and I will not hide or lie or turn my face away!"

With those words she made eye-contact with Ranma once more and began stalking toward him. "Tell me, Ranma. Tell me what I saw, what really happened. Tell me what you are." The trembling strengthened, to the point where she had to stumble to a halt. "Tell me," she said, the words now more plea than command. "My brother has called you a foul sorcerer since before you and I met, I think." She gave a bitter laugh, one that grated less against Ranma's nerves than her usual one, but the pain in it was almost worse. "He lives his life bounded by his dreams of an old, dead code, that even when it still breathed wasn't what he imagines. I have pitied and despised him since he was old enough to begin blinding himself so. I have stared coldly into the face of his delusions of superiority, mocked his claims that only magic could explain your victories over him. And now... this..."

"I ain't any kind of sorcerer, Kodachi," Ranma said, finding at least enough guts to begin his explanation here. "I earned every one of my wins, over your brother or anybody, whether it was skill or seein' my chance and grabbing it."

"Yes, I've seen that. Seen both of those. I believed you were just like me." She had been staring desperately into his eyes, but at this point she dropped her gaze and sank to her knees on the rooftop, one hand curled around her abdomen and the other clenching and unclenching against the shingles of the roof. "Tatewaki immured himself within a set of rules, saying that they were all he needed and never seeing them for the chains they were. But I... I chose the rules to be a cage, and I was on the outside, not trapped within.

"Whenever I pursued you, I would change the rules to suit my whim, watch you flail about and scramble to adjust. Each time it gave me great pleasure to watch you try, and even greater pleasure when you succeeded. To see you learn and grow and change, to watch and look toward the day when you finally saw the chains for what they were and joined me on the outside... they were some of my fondest dreams."

She fell momentarily silent. Before Ranma could say anything, though, she spoke again. "That's exactly what they were. DREAMS!" She shouted the word, bringing her left hand up from the roof, clenching it into a fist, then smashing it down. Ranma flinched at the gesture, even though Kodachi hadn't struck with force enough to damage herself or the roof. "I believed it, Ranma! Saw it as a surety on par with the sunrise! I was certain down to the very marrow of my _bones_ that I knew what the future held. That as we walked farther and farther down our paths yours would draw closer and closer to mine, that the love I was so certain I saw hiding within you would finally burn free."

The Black Rose screwed her eyes closed, stifling a sob. Ranma began edging to the side, to get more of the roof behind him rather than empty air. "I was so proud, so confident, so convinced that I understood things far better than the petty fools around me. Such a tall, gleaming, beautiful tower of glass, broken in an instant by a thrown stone of reality, a reality that I never would have dreamed possible.

"It shouldn't _be_ possible!" She surged to her feet in the blink of an eye, striding toward him once more, her gaze angry and desperate. "What force could there possibly be in an ugly lumpy bucket of pig-iron, or water thrown from such a pail? How could it possibly defy all laws of reality, wash so much mass away to nothing, transform you or anyone in such a manner? It should not be possible!"

"It's magic, Kodachi," Ranma ventured to say. "It don't worry much about the rules. Ain't that kinda what you were just talking about?"

Her eyes widened and she stumbled to a halt. All the fire seemed to go out of her at once, as she fell back to the rooftop. "You have certainly learned well enough the lesson of striking someone in her weakness," she said bitterly.

The faint, reassuring smile that he'd managed to form vanished at that. "What's that supposed to mean!" Ranma protested.

"Look at me!" She found the strength to yell once more, but not to stand. "My self! My belief! My knowledge of how things work, of how things are. All broken! You stand there and look down upon me, riven to pieces and cast down to the dust, forced to see that I understand nothing, and you merely smile? Smile as you cast back into my face the truth of the illusions, the _delusions_ that shaped my life for so long!"

"Th- that's not what I meant!" Ranma cried, waving his arms helplessly, unhappily aware that this response was no better than any he'd made countless times in the past.

Kodachi's eyes narrowed dangerously, sensing the familiarity of the situation like a shark does blood in the water. Just so had he floundered before her those many times before when she changed the rules. "No?" Uncoiling with a speed she usually only managed with her ribbon, the Black Rose darted forward, wrapping her arms around him, her nails clenching in the back of his neck tightly enough to draw blood. In the same motion she drew his head toward hers with all her strength, fighting his instinctive resistance through sheer manic energy.

Then the compound painted on her nails took effect, and Ranma could no longer stop her from crushing his mouth against her own.

He wasn't sure how long she held him there. Pain, dizziness, confusion, anger, and shame all warred within him, blunting the worst of the moment but at the same time seeming to make it stretch interminably. At last Kodachi ended the kiss, laying his paralyzed form out flat on the roof, the Black Rose kneeling atop his torso, staring down at him for another eternity.

"I don't know you," she whispered at last, softly, mournfully. "I don't know myself. I don't even know the world I live in, and small comfort that apparently no-one else does either. Pouring water on you out of an iron bucket shatters at least four laws of nature, and it does so every time if my brother can be believed. What reason did I have to think my kiss would not change you as well, perhaps transform you into a great black panther to pay my daring back tenfold in pain?"

Not even the paralytic agent could block the shiver that ran through Ranma at the idea of that kind of transformation. Kodachi noticed it, and evoked another by running one finger down his neck to the first tie on his shirt. "I could be dancing along the edge of the abyss, stepping ever closer to a senseless, bloody, unpredictable death. There is no way to know. There can be no understanding if even the _world_ doesn't have rules," the Black Rose mused. "Why then should I not live as I wish, die if I must, take this moment to do as I please and damn the consequences?

"Can you tell me, Ranma darling?" she asked. Ranma was in no position to say for sure, but he thought he heard nothing but honesty in the final word. "The world is not what I thought it was. Is there any place at all to stand? Can you tell me, can you help me, can you give me even a little ray of light to find my way to some truth?"

She leaned down far enough to tickle his lips with the hiss of her breath. "Can you give me any reason to hope for tomorrow or the days that might follow it?" She pulled back again, bringing one hand around into his field of vision, displaying an innocuous tube of lipstick. "Or are there no answers, no truths, nothing but chaos and whatever pleasures we may wring from the moment? Shall I paint my lips with this extract and kiss you again, dearest one? Shall I turn your blood to fire within you and change your paralysis into passion, steal from you all thought other than the pleasures of the flesh? Shall we take this rooftop and let it serve in place of the first night I always believed would come for us, back when I believed in anything?"

Summoning all his strength, Ranma barely managed to twitch his head first to the right, then to the left, finally back to center. If Kodachi noticed this desperate negative, she apparently saw no reason to respect it. With deliberate, agonizing slowness, the Black Rose applied the chemically-enhanced cosmetic to her lips. She paused, staring down at Ranma, holding motionless just long enough for him to begin to hope... then leaned down and kissed him once more.

It was nothing like her previous brutal attack. This time Kodachi's lips were warm and gentle against his, teasing him, pulling back as if satisfied, then pressing softly in for more. The unfamiliarity and intensity of the sensations were enough to scramble Ranma's brain almost to insensibility.

The warmth spreading through his body and displacing the numbness from her previous attack, along with his rapidly rising heart rate, shocked him back to clarity. Ranma tensed for a moment, judging how quickly he was recovering conscious motor control... then convulsed, throwing Kodachi off him. The Black Rose didn't even try to control her fall, merely landing where her momentum took her and skidding rather than rolling to disperse the impact. Ranma pulled himself up into a crouch, attempting to push away the rest of the paralysis without giving an opening to the other effects Kodachi had promised. "Gimme the antidote! NOW!" he demanded, forcing the words through lips still stiff and clumsy.

"What antidote?" she asked, drawing her legs up so that her knees rested under her chin.

At another time Ranma might have felt guilty at the sight of the large, bloody scrape on her calf, which stopped just short of her leotard. Here and now, there was no time for such niceties. "The one to the damn drug you just forced on me!" he spat.

Kodachi ducked her head, so that all he could see above her knees was the fringe of her bangs. "I lied, Ranma. I do that sometimes."

Part of him wanted to dart forward and choke some sense out of her. He ignored the impulse, though he wasn't sure whether this was due to decency or unwillingness to risk getting that close. "What! What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"The lipstick itself was nothing more than an antidote, to the paralytic agent from earlier. Anything you felt after that, it was all your own."

Ranma's mouth gaped feebly open and closed for several moments, as he processed this. Sure enough, his heartrate was sinking back to normal in the absence of any immediate threat. The warmth he felt, was only unusual by contrast to his previous numbness. The only desire he knew as he looked toward Kodachi's curled-up, bleeding form was a fervent wish to bring this encounter to an end.

"So what would you have of me, Ranma darling?" In another blurring motion, Kodachi went from hiding behind her knees to balanced on them, then stalking slowly toward him on all fours. "I won't fight, unless that's what you want. Shall we pretend the cure was what I said at first? Will you take your pleasure upon me? Or would you rather answer pain for pain?"

Staring at her, watching her slink forward, Ranma felt all remaining anger and ferocity drain away. "No," he said tiredly. "No, I ain't gonna do... that. No, I don't want to hurt you. Just... just stop this, Kodachi."

She did stop, halting in mid-slink and staring toward him with clouded eyes. "I don't know what else to do, Ranma," she whispered. "I told you already, I don't know anything. The world isn't what I thought it was. All the pieces have broken free, spinning and glittering so beautifully, but there's nothing fixed and no place to stand. Can you tell me? Can you show me?"

"No, I can't! I can't even understand the question!" he shot back. "So magic is real. So what! You're actin' like it's the end of the world or something. Like just because strange things can happen, that means you can't trust nothing to ever happen the way it did before? What the hell kinda idea is that? Even with magic, there's rules! Just cause they override the normal stuff of the ordinary world, you think nothing in your life makes any sense at all? That's just... crazy..." He gulped, then pushed past the unfortunate choice of words. "Look, Kodachi. I've had a Jusenkyo curse for more than a year now, and that ain't the only time I've had to deal with supernatural junk. Magic can be a big fat pain in the ass... but no way on earth is it the worst one I've ever experienced. And finding out that it's real, that some stuff you thought was wrong, that ain't any kind of stone to shatter someone's whole life to nothing."

"Those are just words, Ranma," she murmured, still on hands and knees looking up at him. "You can say this shouldn't have such an effect, but why should that change things? Why should I listen to you?"

"You said you'd do what I wanted," Ranma shot back, infusing as much bravado into his voice as he could, doing his best to ignore the fundamental flaw in what he was saying. She was a Kuno after all; it was hardly surprising that making sense might not work, but perhaps making demands would. He knelt down to better look her in the eye. "Fine. Do it. I'm telling you flat out—quit cryin' to the world about how it didn't turn out to be what you thought it was, and start trying to learn what it really is."

Kodachi didn't say anything right away, but she did pull back into a relatively normal seated position. Ranma wasn't sure whether that was a good sign or not. "Can you tell me that there's anything to learn?" she said plaintively at last. "Your... you said it was a curse? You said there were other things you've seen as well?"

"A Jusenkyo curse." _'Maybe the explanation will help her, to hear how this really works.'_ For a moment Ranma paused, considering the oddity, that someone who'd claimed to place so much value on her status outside the rules should be hit so hard to find that there were exceptions to natural laws. Maybe it was different when you were talking about the restrictions people made for themselves, rather than the rules of the world that almost everybody believed immutable. "It's a valley in China, the valley of cursed springs. There's a whole bunch of different pools of water there. Each one has had something drown there over the last who-knows-how-many thousand years, and anybody who falls into a pool gets changed into whatever drowned. After that, hot water changes you back to your original form, and cold water brings the curse back again. Oh, and just for the record, your brother's lame-brained idea about cold iron buckets doesn't make a bit of difference. It's just the water an' whether it's cold or hot."

"And with such a small thing, the impossible becomes a part of your life," Kodachi murmured.

"It ain't the only time I've seen stuff that ought to be impossible," Ranma muttered. "Heck, even your brother's been there for some of it. Of course, he just took it in stride, fitting it into whatever fantasy he's got of living a legend."

"Indeed." Kodachi's eyes narrowed to venomous slits, which would have made Ranma more nervous if she had been looking at him rather than gazing off into the distance. "If you can see that, then perhaps you can understand a little better of why this should strike me so hard. That is _exactly_ what he does with his life. He sees only what he wants to see. He cares deeply about the world and how it perceives him, and in any place where he cannot accept the truth of that, he merely embraces a fantasy. I _never_ wanted to be like that, Ranma."

He regarded her in silence for a few moments. _'Well, that at least makes sense. I wonder how much of this is really just backlash against Tatewaki turning out to be right about something big.'_ Forcing himself to ignore the irony, Ranma replied, "Right. You don't wanna just look at things and take them to be the way you want them. You need to understand what's really going on."

The Black Rose nodded slowly. "To learn the truth of things, not the convenient fantasy. And...," as uncertainty began bleeding back into her voice and eyes, "if there is no truth, no stable, solid ground...?" Before Ranma could answer, she shook her head. Her eyes hardened like steel. "But how would anyone ever know, without searching? Right!" she said, snapping the word off. "You are quite right, Ranma. I shall not cower from this challenge, nor turn a blind eye to what I have seen. I shall travel to this place called Jusenkyo and learn of its mysteries myself!"

"That's great, Kodachi... Huh!" Ranma boggled. "I wasn't tryin' to suggest you should go grab your own curse!"

"Perhaps you didn't say it in so many words, darling. However, you did counsel me to face down the mysteries that lurk behind the obvious world I have lived in for so long. You were quite right to do that. I do need to learn these things, to experience the deeper currents of life, to come face to unflinching face with the unknown. This Jusenkyo shall be my starting point."

"You really don't need to go that far!" he declared. "Kodachi, just stick around here and keep your eyes open. Don't just blow Kuno off when he starts babbling about something that don't sound possible. Enough crazy stuff happens in this town to give you all the exposure you could ever want..." His voice trailed off as he saw Kodachi shake her head emphatically. "Why not?"

"I can't stay here." Kodachi spoke the words as firmly as she could, but there was more than a hint of desperation, and something darker, lurking behind them. "Four days have passed since I saw you transformed, and each one has been worse. This place... its very familiarity has made it all the darker. Everything I believed I know so well, all the people and places, rules and routines... every piece of it has grown more and more to seem like a mocking, leering mask, stretched paper-thin over a hungry abyss."

She paused to take several deep breaths. "I cannot stay here. Every familiar thing scrapes against my mind like nails on a chalkboard. Even," she hesitated, staring wide-eyed at him, "even you, Ranma dearest. Especially you. You were the hammer-blow that shattered all the mirrors and windows. Looking at you, the sensation is strongest of all—that I'm staring into something I only pretend to understand, something that could rise up and devour me at any moment." She tilted her head to the side, breaking into a wide, sharp-edged smile. "Though it is also true, with you that sensation is rather more pleasant than otherwise."

Ranma gulped. Kodachi held the grin for a moment longer, then let it trickle away. "No, I must go. But Ranma..." She broke eye-contact for a moment, looking down at her clenched fists. Then, with a jerk, she forced her head straight up again, staring directly into his eyes as she said, "Will you come with me?"

Now he was the one fighting not to look away, to get distance, to remove himself from the intensity of the moment. It took all his courage and strength to return her stare, and say, "No. I can't." He let the words lie there like a stone for a moment, before some unfathomable impulse forced him to continue. "I won't."

Curiously enough, Kodachi didn't so much as flinch. The Black Rose merely exhaled a long, quiet sigh. "As I admitted before," she returned. "I don't know you. Not truly, not deeply. All the things I believed for so long... how much of it is true? Is any? Will any of what I saw as the future come to pass? I don't know, I cannot know. Understand this, Ranma..." Now he could see pain in her eyes, but it was dwarfed by the certainty with which she spoke the next words. "If you mean that, and hold to it, at least that will be stability of a sort. At least it will be some kind of truth. Perhaps the time we spend apart will only draw us back together, perhaps enough of what I believed all along will show itself as truth. Whether that proves true or false, I can accept it... so long as there truly is proof, answers and not just circling questions."

"If you think Jusenkyo will give you those, then I hope you're right," Ranma replied, no longer forcing himself to look directly at her. "Just... don't jump in a random spring or nothing. If you feel like you gotta get a curse of your own, talk to the guide there, find out what all choices you've got. Some of 'em are a lot worse than others."

"I thank you for your concern, and your advice... even, even if they are all you can give me..." Kodachi's voice had sunk to near inaudibility by the end of the statement. She paused to recover her composure, then said, "I don't see any reason to prolong this leavetaking. I will say farewell to you now, dearest Ranma... and hope that it shall be the French 'au revoir'."

"Good luck, Kodachi," he said as evenly as he could. As if on cue, both rose to their feet. "I hope you—" He broke off, staring wide-eyed at something his changing posture had revealed behind her.

"Ranma? What...?" She didn't bother to finish, turning instead to follow his line of sight. She blinked, then glared, to find she was no longer sharing the roof only with her darling. "You," she growled, recognizing the shriveled form of Shampoo's ancient ancestor. "What are you doing here? Can you not allow a tender moment of parting to pass in private?"

"I didn't want you to run off before I had a chance to talk to you," Cologne replied evenly. "Since it's an old woman's prerogative to imagine everyone is interested to hear her thoughts and advice, let me share a little with you."

"Do not try to talk me out of this. My mind is quite made up already!"

Cologne paused for a moment, attempting to fathom why Kodachi would jump to such a conclusion. "I actually agree with your plan," she said mildly. "In fact, I wanted to help you along with it."

"You do?... Ah, yes, I was forgetting. When I am gone from here, things will be easier for your dutiful little descendent."

"What you're forgetting is that I am the Matriarch of the Chinese Amazons, an entire people who revere the strength of warrior women." Cologne's eyes bored into Kodachi. "I swear on the mantle of my leadership, and on the honor of my family, I am here to offer you help in finding the very things you're searching for. You are stumbling blindly, lost, trying to find your way. I'll offer you what aid I can."

With some effort, Kodachi tore her gaze away from Cologne, looking to Ranma for a hint on how to respond. No help there; he seemed frozen in uncertainty. "And what aid is that?"

"You spoke to Ranma about how hard it was, to learn that there are more things in heaven and earth than were dreamt of in your philosophy," Cologne said. "My people know many of those secrets, have held onto mysteries long forgotten by the more 'civilized' world. You can experience them there, safely and on your own terms. That is what I'm offering you, Miss Kuno—the right to visit my people for a time, and learn the very things that you are so desperate for." The Matriarch cracked a smile. "Also, they can give you better directions to the location of Jusenkyo than Ranma's vague revelation that it's somewhere in China."

The Black Rose contemplated this for awhile. "Ranma?" she asked, turning to him once again. "How much of what she says is true?"

"As far as I can tell, all of it," he said with a shrug. "And besides, Cologne ain't the kind to lie about something big. She might mess with your head when she's bored and there's nothing real on the line... but for something like this..." Slowly he nodded. "Yeah, I believe her. If she says you can visit the Amazons, learn what you need, and not get into trouble while you do it..." Ranma looked away from Kodachi to Cologne, giving her his best probing stare. "Then I'd say that's prob'ly the way it is."

The Matriarch nodded. "If you wish, I will give you a letter of introduction, as well as directions on how to reach our lands."

"I... I am not ready to make such a decision," Kodachi admitted. "But if you give me the documents, I'll consider it."

"Very well." Cologne produced a pen, then several sheets of parchment which she filled with tight, angular script. "May these serve you well," she murmured as Kodachi took the finished products.

The Black Rose merely offered a slight nod, then turned back to face Ranma. "We have already said... I have... Ranma, I, I hope..." She gulped, blinked a tear out of one eye, choked a few words of farewell, and dashed away.

The silence left behind her stretched for nearly two minutes. It quickly became apparent that Cologne was waiting for Ranma to break it. Eventually he obliged. "Granny, I only want to know one thing."

"And what is that?"

"How long were you just hanging back and watching?"

Cologne allowed the placid look to slip away from her features, replaced by a tired look of guilt. "When you didn't arrive on time for your training, I waited longer than I should have before I set out to look for you. For that, I apologize. I found you and Miss Kuno just as you broke the kiss and threw her off you. After that, I judged that the best thing to do was watch and wait, rather than stick my nose in as quickly as possible." She gave him a slight smile. "I must say, you handled things extremely well, Son-in-law. Even if it probably was more luck than anything else."

Ranma snorted, rubbing absently at the back of his neck. The scratches Kodachi had inflicted had already healed, and the dried, crusted blood was irritating him. "Yeah, that's me, the luckiest guy in all Tokyo."

_'Bah, fully half the stress in your life comes from mishandled good fortune, rather than sheer bad luck.'_ Cologne opted not to give voice to this opinion just now. "Nonetheless, you faced Miss Kuno in a most dangerous state, and helped her find her way back to as much stability as we've ever seen from her. I could not have done better myself," she admitted. "At least, not without resorting to something more powerful than simply listening and talking."

"Xi Fang Gao?" Ranma guessed. He hadn't forgotten what Shampoo said, about how expensive the formula was and how it should only be used in a crisis situation. However, surely when it was a Kuno receiving a new lease on mental health, the Amazons could count on adequate compensation afterward. "Could you cure her for real with that? Is that maybe the real reason you invited her to drop in at the Amazon village?"

The Matriarch inclined her head. "If she accepts my offer, she will find another, much better one laid out before her in our lands."

"An offer?" he pressed. "That's what it'll be? Her choice?"

Cologne paused, considering how best to answer. "I cannot say for sure. It won't be my decision to make. As you saw, I left the choice of whether to visit our lands entirely up to her. If she does choose to go, and if she's still as stable then as she was when she left us, then I can assure you nothing will be forced on her. However, if she has become a danger to others, or to herself, the acting Matriarch may make the decision that Miss Kuno herself would not be capable of." She paused again, giving him time to mull over her response. "What do you think about that, Son-in-law?"

Ranma heaved a sigh. "That in something like this, there's no easy answers. I guess the best thing to do now is hope. Hope she goes there, hope she wants what you're offering, hope whoever's on the other end of the bottle of shampoo really can give her the help she needs."

"For what it's worth, I think she has a good chance," Cologne said soberly. "And that never would have been true without your place in her life, Ranma. I don't suppose you enjoyed that meeting, but your stressful encounter could be Miss Kuno's lifeline to redemption. I have not kept very close tabs on her during my stay in this town, but from what I have seen she's never been so ready to change, so open to the fact that she needs to."

"And that happened after she saw my curse, and I told her about it," he mused. "What if... what if I'd told her a long time ago?"

"Impossible to answer," Cologne said briskly. "Don't beat yourself up, boy. She reacted as she did after learning you turn into a falcon. Don't think for a moment that the response would be identical if she had learned the man she loved and the girl she hated were truly both Ranma Saotome."

"Guess you're right," Ranma murmured. He sat in silence for awhile longer, then got to his feet. "All right, we've lost enough time. Let's get going, I've got a chicken to pluck. Or not to pluck. Whatever."

"Are you sure you want to proceed to the training? You've had a very stressful time already today. If you'd rather go flying for real, it might do more to improve your state of mind."

"Forget that! No way am I lettin' Shampoo beat me in the time it takes to master that stupid thing!" Ranma declared, clenching his fist and scowling the scowl of Righteous Martial Determination. Then he blinked. "Speaking of Shampoo, why isn't she here instead of you? Not that I'm saying I'd want her to see any of that junk with Kodachi!" he hastened to add.

Cologne snorted. "Soun Tendo decided to put in his order early today."

Ranma shook his head. "Geez, how quick was that? He musta called while I was still in the bathhouse to change back to human. You'd think he'd clue in sooner or later to the fact that doing this is as good as tipping Shampoo off that I'm away from their place right now. He's basically inviting her to go look for me after the delivery."

"Bah. That's one man who couldn't find a clue if it were branded on his backside," the Matriarch pronounced. "I strongly suspect Nabiki Tendo was switched at birth. In any case, Shampoo will no doubt make it back soon if she hasn't already, so we should get moving as well."

"Sure, let's go... hang on, one more question," he said.

"Yes?"

"You told me you set up some kinda illusion to keep me from getting spotted at the restaurant for training, or even while I'm heading toward it. You told me I needed to come in over the rooftops, and that I needed to get off the street no later than six blocks away from your place." Ranma waited for the Matriarch to nod, then said, "So what gives with the Black Petunia? How come she caught me? We're less than four blocks away right now."

Cologne chuckled ruefully. "I never said you'd be hidden at the six-block line, and that wouldn't work well anyway. What if someone were watching you, and they saw you simply fade from sight? No, sonny boy, the illusion does nothing until you cross a certain ring of rooftops. Then anyone who's watching loses sight of the real you, instead seeing a false image continue off into the distance toward some other destination than Shampoo's and my home."

"Uh-huh," Ranma said dubiously. "So tell me, Granny. Just out of curiosity..." He gestured toward the rooftop that would have been his next stepping stone, had Kodachi not dropped in when she did. "Is _that_ rooftop part of the ring?"

"Bingo."

"Luckiest guy in Tokyo," Ranma groused. "Yeah. That's me."

* * *

Soun took a long last drag on his cigarette, held the smoke within for a moment, then exhaled it in a stream. The smoke drifted out and away on the breeze, thinning to invisibility as it passed beyond the porch into the backyard. He stared in its wake, his eyes resting on the dojo. Akane was inside there, training; she had been for four hours now. Three and a half hours past, Shampoo had come and gone without disturbing his daughter, which was one more bright spot on this Sunday afternoon. He stubbed out the cancer stick in an ashtray and remarked, "She's coming along well, isn't she, Saotome?"

Seated across the shogi table from his friend, Genma nodded. "Once she knew what I was training her toward, she did everything I wanted, pushed as hard as I asked her to. Far as I can tell, she's still just as determined as when she started."

"That's what it looked like to me," Soun agreed, still not facing his friend. Genma had roped him into helping with Akane's training several times now, with the most recent instance occurring the previous day. "If that's the kind of effort she puts forth all the time, I'm not surprised that her reserves have grown as much as they have."

"Mm-hm." Genma nodded sagely. "I think she'll be ready soon to start learning to use her aura. I'm planning to begin teaching her those principles in another week, probably start with—"

"Excuse me?" Soun interrupted, swiveling to stare directly at Genma. "What was that, Saotome?"

Genma stumbled to a halt, nonplused by this response. "What? You saw for yourself that she's almost got enough energy to begin with the minor tricks."

"That's exactly the problem!" Soun declared. "We discussed this before you even began training her, remember? I don't want my precious little girl to get overconfident and go challenge someone she can't handle! You're not supposed to be teaching her anything that might lead to that. Just keep on working on the exercises to build her aura."

Genma frowned. "I don't remember either one of us saying that. I seem to recall telling you that I had a plan to do what Akane asked, give her some real teaching, and that I'd do it without making things worse between her and Shampoo. I also told you I had an idea of how it could help bring our children together. Lying to her and telling her I was teaching something when I really wasn't, doesn't fit into any of that."

"And showing her a few tricks that nobody else her age knows isn't going to cause a disaster!" Soun retorted. "That isn't going to encourage her to challenge Shampoo!"

"I already told you, she won't do that as long as I tell her she's not ready." Genma frowned. "You do realize that will only stay true as long as she respects me as a teacher and believes what I tell her, don't you? And if I just keep doing the same old thing over and over again, sooner or later she'll figure out that she's being fooled." _'Probably later,'_ he conceded within the privacy of his own mind, _'especially if I keep making every session different. But it won't work forever.'_

"Well, that's still better than asking for trouble right away! Saotome, you're only supposed to be buying time until Akane gets over this temper tantrum and goes back to her sweet, kind, forgiving, normal self. Not encouraging her to think she can take on girls who've trained for real their whole lives!" Soun paused, taking a few deep breaths to regain his composure.

"That's not what I'm doing," Genma growled. "And if her normal self is so sweet, kind, and forgiving, why do you think getting stronger would just mean she'd try to beat her competition to a pulp?"

"SAAOOOTOOOMEEE..." The flare and growl of Soun's Demon Head sent Genma diving straight into the Crouch of the Wild Tiger. The Tendo patriarch let his oldest friend bow and scrape piteously for several moments before releasing the technique. He sat quietly, letting Genma gather up the shreds of his composure.

"Look, old friend," Soun said with a sigh. He was calmer now, having burned away all immediate anger and frustration with the chi attack. "You and I both know how harsh is the path of the true martial artist. You've led your son along it, and created a priceless treasure, a man who is already better than either of us. How hard did you have to push him, to make that happen? You worked him every bit as hard as the Master ever did us, didn't you?"

Genma growled, decidedly unamused at the comparison. "I never tied my boy to a tree and ate in front of him while he went hungry. And I damn well never sent him into a woman's bathhouse to create a ruckus so I could peep without getting caught! I challenged him, Tendo, but I didn't humiliate him. Even the insults were only to make him stronger, to give him one more weapon against opponents and one less weapon they could use against him!" It had worked, too, or almost. There was a time when Ranma had truly been impervious to all insults anyone could throw at him. It wasn't Genma's fault that he'd become unable to shrug off slurs against his manhood.

Well, it wasn't Genma's _intentional _fault.

"Yes, yes," Soun placated. "My point is that you drove him as hard you could, to make him the martial artist he is today. If I'd had a son, I would have done the same thing, at least as much as I could without abandoning my girls to go on a training journey. But I could never treat my precious Akane like that!"

"And I'm not doing that either!" Genma snapped, still upset at the implied comparison to Happosai. "I've been pushing her only about half as hard as I would Ranma if I were teaching him these things."

"Part of me thinks that's still too much. I haven't forgotten what this training was like when we went through it. How the Master would lecture us about pushing past our limits, pressing on through harder and harder tasks that we never were given time to master. I haven't forgotten what came after that, either! How he would beat the two of us black and blue, then force us to train through the pain! Telling us that that was our new limit, the new foe we had to fight in order to keep our strength growing as quickly as possible." Soun grimaced, almost on the verge of tears at the idea of his dear little Akane enduring such horrors.

"You can't think I'd ever do that!" Genma protested. "Even the Master wouldn't do something like that to a girl!"

"Of course I don't," Soun said briskly. "Now, did it ever occur to you that since you won't be taking Akane to that next level of the training, you're already lying to her about what you're really teaching? She's shown fine chi growth so far, but it can't last, not when you just keep throwing new physical challenges at her. She's probably strong enough now to pull off minor, low-power tricks, but her chi growth is about to slow to a crawl. It'll be years before she's strong enough to do anything real."

"I thought of a way around that," Genma said, hurrying quickly on before Soun could ask what that way was. "If I picked the right sequence of exercises, each new one would force her to move in ways that the last few haven't left her ready to. Sore muscles won't be a great substitute, but they should still be better than nothing."

"Absolutely not!" Soun thundered. "You're talking about deliberately risking permanent joint and ligament damage! I won't allow it, not to my precious little girl!"

"That would only happen if I pushed her too hard, which I won't!" Genma countered, beginning to feel the first hint of desperation. Blast it all, was Soun just going to ignore what he'd said about this course of action also bringing Akane and Ranma closer together? He shouldn't be kicking up this much fuss, not from the little Genma had let him see about Akane's training.

"I'm sorry, Saotome. My mind is made up," the Tendo patriarch stated flatly.

"Fine," Genma growled, "I won't do that." _'Let's just let the conversation end here. He's obviously not ready to hear any of what's really going on.'_

"Fine then." The two sat in silence for awhile, before Soun suggested a game of shogi.

They were still setting up the pieces when Kasumi entered the room. "Hello, Kasumi," Soun said, looking up from the board. Through sheer force of habit, Genma swapped the pieces around to a more advantageous position for himself. "Back from the market and Dr. Tofu's?"

"Yes, Father," Kasumi replied. Her brow wrinkled thoughtfully. "Dr. Tofu was as silly as ever, so I'm not sure whether this was a joke or not. But he said he had something I was supposed to take home with me. It looks like a martial arts scroll of some kind." Before Genma could say anything, she produced it and handed it to her father. "Did you ask him for this?"

"No," Soun said absently, opening the scroll and beginning to study its contents.

"Oh my," Kasumi said, her attention drifting away from her father to rest on his friend. "Mr. Saotome, are you all right? You're pale, sweaty, and trembling. Did you eat something that didn't agree with you? I didn't think Akane had been in the kitchen lately."

Genma didn't even hear her. _'Dammit, Tofu, you were supposed to hold onto that until I came to get it! Please don't have written anything in there that points to me... please don't have written anything in there that points to me...'_

Soun's interest grew as he read over the scroll. It appeared to be freshly written by the good doctor, who Soun suspected had compiled it from multiple sources. It showed many different shiatsu points and how to trigger them, some with simple pressure from a fingertip, others with acupuncture, still more with moxibustion. All the points seemed to be related in one way, however—each created physical pain without doing harm to the body. _'Hmm, perhaps this could be used against the Master,'_ Soun speculated as he read farther down the scroll. _'Most of these look like they only have minor effects, but I bet they'd reinforce each other and build up to extreme levels if you hit enough of them in the right order. Of course, we'd best never let him get his hands on this...'_ Fighting off a shudder, Soun glanced further down the page. Toward the bottom, the illustrations were replaced by a large block of the doctor's writing. Soun skipped down to that, wondering whether it would shed any additional light.

Genma watched as his oldest friend's eyes widened, then narrowed. As his skin paled, then slowly began to flush an alarming red. As his hands began to tremble, then clenched tightly enough to damage the paper that had miraculously escaped a Kasumi-dazed Tofu unharmed. _'Well, damn,'_ he thought bitterly.

"Kasumi, would you please go take care of something in the kitchen?" Soun rasped, his tone startling the girl out of her concern over Genma.

"Something?" she echoed. "Did you want some tea or snacks, Father?"

"Please. Just. Go." The words and tone sent her quickly moving toward the safety of her refuge. Soun waited until the door was shut behind her before saying, "Well, Saotome. It appears that Tofu was right, even if he was out of his mind. He did mean for this scroll to be delivered here, since this note is addressed to you. All the instruction you could want on how to use the points, which combinations are safe and which aren't. Easy enough to start someone out with low levels of pain and work your way steadily higher over a few weeks." His hand closed convulsively, crumpling the scroll. "But you could also use this knowledge to dish out crippling or even killing pain. So I'm going to give you exactly one chance to tell me you got this to use against the Master. Not in your training of my little girl."

Genma said nothing in response, too busy trying to make sense of the thoughts whirling in his head. Akane's determination, and the respect she'd given him... his own pride in seeing her improve, in knowing that he was succeeding at a very different challenge than training Ranma had been... thoughts of Akane and Ranma, and how he was almost ready to begin the part of the plan that ought to bring them closer together... the hope he had, of how Ranma would react when he finally saw the full power and glory of what his father was trying to teach Akane, Genma's last, best chance to win back first place in his son's respect...

"Well!" Soun barked.

"Your little girl asked me to make her into a real martial artist." Genma's tone could have chewed its way through solid steel. "That's exactly what I'm going to do."

Soun was almost angry enough to forgo the Demon Head and go straight into physical attacks. Only the faint awareness that Genma could squash him in that arena held him back. Instead, he poured all his anger and outrage into his aura, intent on calling up a manifestation greater than Genma had ever seen.

The chi surged up, rising from the burning pit of anger deep within his gut, clawing its way toward freedom... and found itself smothered under a stifling foreign blanket.

"Damn you, Saotome!" he growled, realizing the red haze in the air before him wasn't just a veil birthed from his anger. Genma's own aura was out, pushing his down, suppressing it, preventing his ultimate expression of authority. Well, Genma might be able to fight directly against his chi, but he couldn't touch Soun's emotions... and this was only making him angrier.

Both men sweated and strained, faces screwed up in terrible grimaces. Genma gritted his teeth as he felt Soun's aura strain ever higher toward roaring, malevolent release. He had to win this, for both their sakes, and for their children as well. _'Please let this work,'_ he begged any higher power that might care to listen. Then, bracing himself, he thinned the force of his counter ever so slightly.

A deep growl of triumph rattled in Soun's throat as he felt his adversary's defense give way. Summoning all his strength to bear, he forced his aura upward and outward to freedom.

Only once in his youth had Soun used the Demon Head against Happosai. He had extrapolated from principles the ancient lecher had taught him, but had developed the trick all on his own. He'd hoped it would be enough to affect Happosai, and indeed the Demon Master had been affected—he'd gotten a good, delighted laugh out of the spectacle. As far as his disciples had ever been able to tell, Happi was pleased as punch to see Soun develop such a thing on his own. He'd even played along as a joke in more recent days, pretending to be scared by the move while he was living under Soun's roof. In the quiet times afterward, though, he would always subtly remind Soun that it was just that—an act. Something his disciples knew all too well.

Neither Soun nor Genma had forgotten the demonstration he'd given that first time, of how a master could defeat the move.

Soun's rising aura surged through the weakened patch in Genma's. By the time he recognized the sensation he'd felt once before, it was too late. Genma clamped down hard again, forming his own aura into a projection of himself for greater control, wrestling Soun's uprushing spirit out of the alignment needed for the desired effect. He twisted and heaved, burning a significant portion of his own strength in the process... and completely emptying Soun's reserves in a heartbeat.

_'Hot damn, it worked,'_ Genma thought, drawing his energy back inside himself. _'I'll have to thank the Master for explaining what he did in such detail, all those years ago.'_ He stared grimly forward at Soun, now pale, trembling, braced on his hands and knees and gasping for breath. He took a few deep breaths of his own, then said, "I'm through tip-toeing around here. Anything Goes is about winning no matter what. Out-fight your opponent, out-trick them, out-sneak them... take away _any_ of those, and you don't deserve to call yourself a student of the school. Akane's got a long, hard road in front of her, but she asked me for this and I'm going to take her as far as she's willing to go!"

"Please... no..." Soun muttered, looking piteously up. With no strength left, he couldn't sustain anger, but pathos was well within his scope. "I can't bear it... can't lose my precious baby girl..."

"Tendo, she's seventeen years old," Genma snapped. "She'd already be married to Ranma if those two weren't so stubborn. She's nobody's baby any more." He took a few deep breaths, then continued, "And what do you mean, 'lose her'? The more I teach her, the _less_ likely that will happen! Why the hell are you so afraid of her learning to stand up for herself against someone other than my boy!"

"That's not it... she's got so far to go, and it would hurt her so much along the way to get there..." Soun pulled back into a seated position, his arms clenched around his belly as if he'd swallowed something terribly bitter. "She shouldn't have to. Ranma is more than strong enough to protect her. That should be his responsibility, not hers."

"And what if something happens when he's not there to deal with it?" Genma countered. "Or what if Ranma rescuing her ends up costing us in another way? I know Akane's not the only daughter you care about, she's just the one that gets in the most trouble. But that's not _always_ how it works around here! You remember Kirin, I'm sure. What if some other nut had come by while we were all gone after him, and stolen Kasumi for himself?"

"Please, don't say such things," Soun begged, tears flowing as freely now as they ever had.

"Somebody's got to, apparently," Genma declared. "Akane used that very example the last time I talked to her, when I asked her how determined she was to continue with this. She almost seemed to think I was insulting her by asking." He fired off a glare that Soun didn't even see, as he was still hunched over in tears. "That was three days ago—when I told her about the next phase of the training."

"You mean... you mean she already...?"

"That's right. I'd heard back from Tofu that he was almost ready with the pressure point information I needed. That was my plan all along, how we could do the next phase of the training without me having to strike her hard enough to hurt." Genma snorted. "Or push her hard enough that she hurt herself.

"I told her that this was what she'd be facing, and made sure she really understood it. It took her a while to come to grips with it. But by the end of the session, she was back to herself again, still determined to tough it out and learn the whole of what I'd promised her."

"Genma, please, not my little Akane..."

"Are you even listening to me! Who do you think I'm doing this for, if not her!" Genma took a few seconds to breathe deeply and remind himself that this was just an area where Soun wasn't quite rational. He suspected the loss of his friend's wife had crippled something inside him, twisted it to the point where perhaps no amount of argument would let him see straight on certain issues.

Still, Genma tried. "And it's not just for her, either. You know what I'm doing, Tendo—I'm teaching her a series of advanced techniques, even though her basics are still so shoddy and full of holes. How can I claim to be making her a true martial artist if I don't even address that problem?" he declared grandiosely, then waited for Soun to ask for an answer.

When the man just sat there and stared mournfully at him, he sighed and said, "That's where my boy comes in. Someday soon, I'll 'let it slip' to Ranma that I'm working with Akane on a special technique, rather than teaching her general things. He'll get in my face, telling me that that's the exact opposite of what she needs, and I can get him to volunteer to be the one training her in the essentials. It'll give them the togetherness and common ground they need, and maybe even get Ranma to spend more time at home again." Genma was getting a little worried at how his son so often spent hours away from home while he was busy with Akane. "After all, I'll have to cut back on the training I'm giving her, to let her have time to spend with him."

"If you were planning that all along, why didn't you do it a long time ago?" Soun asked. "Why can't you just use your training as an excuse to get the two of them working together like that, then let it go?"

He didn't have any more arguments left, and his patience was running low too. "Enough," Genma growled. "You'll demand that I stop training her, and you'll beg me to stop training her, and you won't listen to me when I tell you why I won't stop training her. But you won't even think about asking her yourself?" He paused a few moments for emphasis, then said, "All right, Tendo, maybe we can meet halfway on this after all. Let's head out to the dojo right now, and you can try to convince Akane to give up. If _she_ asks me, I'll stop training her."

"I, I can't do that."

Soun barely whispered the words, but as Genma had halfway been expecting them, he had no trouble hearing. _'No, of course not, you couldn't possibly hold back anything from her that she wanted,'_ he thought. _'Still, I shouldn't be so harsh on him. If it was my own daughter, who knows? I might be just as pathetic.'_ "If you won't ask her to quit training with me, don't ask me to quit training her," he pronounced. "Or to pretend that I'm training her when I'm really just going through the motions."

Hours seemed to pass before Soun finally managed a small, trembling, "All right."

Genma allowed himself a smile. Far too many times, people had ignored or interfered with his wishes instead of listening and going along with them. At least this once he'd been able to come out on top. He wished it had been against someone other than his closest friend, and especially that he hadn't had to force Soun to capitulate, but in the end it was for the man's own benefit, as well as that of the very daughter he was so desperate to keep from ever knowing an instant's pain. _'Bah, obviously daughters have to be handled different than sons, but that's going way too far. He'll eventually realize it for himself, once he sees how far Akane has come.'_

As if finding some strength and dignity in the moment of defeat, Soun spoke again. "But I want you to promise me something, Saotome. Promise me that if she ever changes her mind, that if she says she needs to take a break, or that she's had enough and doesn't want to be pushed like this any more, that you'll stop. That you won't try to shove her back onto the road and drive her down it again."

Genma shrugged. It was a simple enough request. "All right, fine," he lied through his teeth.

* * *

The first thing Akane noticed was that Genma wasn't waiting for her. It was unusual, but not unprecedented. Almost all of her afternoon training sessions had started with him waiting for her in the dojo, but there had been a couple of times when her sensei had run late trying to scrounge up the equipment for whatever the new task would be. Sure enough, not only was Genma missing, so was the crate of training aids that the Saotome master inevitably brought to these sessions. She shrugged and began her warm-up stretches. He'd get here before long, she was confident.

The door to the dojo slid open as she completed her fourth set of exercises. "Hello, Mr. Saot..." The greeting died in Akane's throat, and she gaped at the sight before her. It was Genma, but a Genma with a bandage around his head, one arm in a sling and a crutch under the other, his ankle taped and the leg above it splinted, and Akane was almost sure some of the padding under his gi was additional bandages.

"I'm sorry, Akane, but I'm not up to working with you this afternoon," Genma said, the words emerging in a pained grumble that sounded just as bad as he looked. "We're—"

"What happened!" Akane burst out. "You were fine this morning!" At least he had been when he met with her to give her the morning's task. As usual, he'd gotten her started on it, watched her progress for a while, then left for his morning sparring with Ranma. Akane blinked. Come to think of it, they had been much noisier than usual, disturbing her several times when she normally didn't hear them at all over her concentration on her own task... and she hadn't seen him in the short interval between ending her training, grabbing a quick bath and a quicker bite of breakfast, and racing off toward school. That jerk Ranma had even left without her!

"I landed wrong from a jump this morning while I was training Ranma," Genma said gruffly. "So like I was saying, we're going to have to try something different." The elder Saotome hobbled a few steps into the building, then carefully turned to fire a glare back behind him to something outside the dojo. "Well? Get a move on, boy."

"Yeah, yeah." Ranma slouched his way into the dojo. " 'Landed wrong', he says. I flattened you, old man. You didn't put up even half the fight you normally do." He sent his own glare sizzling through the air toward his father. "An' I think we both know why."

"Ranma, you JERK!" Akane blazed across the difference between them, getting between the two Saotomes and staring the younger one dead in the eyes. "That's not what sparring is supposed to be about! How can you do something like that to your own father!"

"Gimme a break, he'll be fine by tomorrow morning," Ranma said, waving one hand as if to dismiss her accusations. "Why don'tcha ask him why I was able to squash him so bad?"

"That would be because you were fighting like a tiger out for blood," Genma snapped, putting enough emphasis on one word to make Ranma blanch and take a step back. The Saotome master was beginning to regret taking things as far as he had. He'd thought at the time that letting Ranma trounce him so thoroughly would make his son more amenable to what his father wanted from him, that if he let Ranma think he was weighted down by his guilty conscience, then the boy would be all the more eager to correct what he'd proclaimed as his father's failing. By now, though, Genma was beginning to wonder whether the ploy was more trouble than it was worth.

"An' that's because you told me that all this time you haven't been working on what she really needs!" Ranma retorted. Turning away from Genma, he said, "Akane, my old man still ain't said exactly what you two are doing, but what I got out of him made it sound like it's some special move or something. Not the basics, not general stuff, not patching up the holes in your foundation. Is that right?"

Akane glared at that last item listed in the series. "I don't see how that's any of your business. And thanks a lot for _stealing _one day of training from me!"

"I'm not stealing anything. I'm here to give you what you really need," Ranma declared. "And that's the kind of training Pop should've been doing all along."

She could find no immediate reply to this. Looking away from son to father, Akane caught what was unmistakably a look of approval on Genma's face. _'Why? How can this possibly do any good? Mr. Saotome is only out of commission for one afternoon. What can training with Ranma possibly do in just that little bit of time?'_ she wondered. _'It doesn't fit in at all with the stuff he's been teaching me. I have to move on to new stuff each time, I have to keep on trying unfamiliar things, because struggling against that is what's going to make me get stronger. Working on the basics? That's taking stuff I already know and making it better, it's nothing like what I'm supposed to be doing. Why would he want that? I can't even ask him, not any of this! Ranma's standing right there and there's no way in the world I'm letting him find out yet about what his dad's really teaching me.'_

"Ranma, go away!" she said decisively, seeing a way out of the impasse. "I want to ask your dad some questions about this without you hanging around."

The younger Saotome blinked, too surprised by this to feel other emotions just yet. "Excuse me, tomboy?" Another couple of blinks, and the majority of the shock was replaced by anger. "Where do you think you get off ordering me out like that! In case you didn't notice, I'm here to do you a favor!"

"It's not a favor if I didn't ask for it!" Akane shot back. "And where do _you_ get off, trying to butt in on a private matter between a teacher and student?"

Through the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, Genma broke into the conversation. This was supposed to bring the children together, not push them further apart. "Akane, he's here to help you. That definitely makes it a favor. And he _can_ help you. I guarantee you, it will be a challenge," he said those five words with enough emphasis to bring her up short, "but Ranma will definitely be able to make you a stronger martial artist."

Ranma frowned, but now it was an expression of puzzlement as he stared at Akane. Every trace of anger had vanished from her. She was standing as if poleaxed, her muscles gone flaccid, her mouth gaping open, her eyes blinking at irregular intervals. For the life of him he couldn't see what his father had said to elicit this kind of reaction. For that matter, he couldn't even see anything in those words that Akane ought not to have known all along.

After a few moments, Akane had recovered enough for at least a little annoyance. _'Stupid, stupid, STUPID! I can't believe I didn't figure it out for myself! 'It will be a challenge', all right. Every time Ranma has tried to help me train, or just pretended to, it hasn't been any help at all. He's always just danced around me and acted like my skills were nothing to someone so great as him. And it always made me so mad I couldn't even think straight! Fighting against that... that's got to be the real challenge!_

_'Well, at least it's better than starting with the pain pressure points...'_ She paused for a moment longer, wondering whether that was really true, then gave a quick bow to both Saotomes. "All right, Mr. Saotome. Ranma, thank you for doing me this favor."

No matter how hard he strained his ears, Ranma couldn't quite make out the notes of the Twilight Zone theme song. He knew it was playing somewhere, though. "Uh, yeah, you're welcome I guess," he said awkwardly.

"Well, if that's settled, I'll be heading back to my room to lie down again," Genma said, hoping it was the right decision to make. Part of him wanted to stay and supervise, and part of him wanted to remain so that Akane would have another chance to express respect and trust for him and his teachings. However, the sensei in him knew that as Akane's primary teacher, if he stayed to watch he'd be undermining his son's authority, probably to the point of uselessness. "Akane, do your best. Ranma, do your best for her."

An awkward silence stretched between the teens as Genma limped out and closed the door behind him. Akane was the first to break it. "So where do you want to start?"

Ranma pondered this, running his mind over the various shortcomings in Akane's skill. "Lemme think. You're slow, you're clumsy, you overcommit, you got a hair-trigger temper, your defense sucks, you got no stamina..." He continued in this vein as long as he could. Eventually he stumbled to a halt, not quite out of material but no longer able to suppress his disbelief. Akane was still just standing there, and though her fists were clenched and she sported a murderous glare, that hair-trigger temper—which he believed to be her worst weakness—hadn't gone off. "Akane?" he asked feebly.

_'The pain pressure points would definitely have been better.'_ After taking and releasing another dozen deep breaths, she asked, "So what you're really saying is, you don't have what it takes to help someone who actually needs help?"

Ranma's face hit the floor with nearly enough force to splinter the wood.

It was some time before he could pull himself up from the facefault. He finally did, though, and uttered a half-choked, half-whispered, "Say that again."

"I said, so what you're really saying is you don't have... what it... takes..." Akane's righteous anger ran down as she realized something. It wasn't anger choking her fiancé's voice, but a mixture of surprise and pleasure. He wore an awestruck, trembling smile that threw her emotions for yet another loop. _'Mr. Saotome, you weren't kidding about this being a challenge,'_ she thought feebly. _'And I haven't even gotten to the part where I'm doing martial arts while I try to keep him from driving me crazy.'_ Finding her voice again, she stammered, "R- Ranma...?"

"I don't believe it! You finally did it! And shrugging off something as bad as THAT? Way to go, Akane!" he exclaimed. "I was just using that as an upper level marker, thought for sure it'd make you blow all your fuses at once. I thought I was gonna have to work my way down to find out what you could stand, figured it'd be something a six-year-old could ignore. And you just took something like that and fired off your own halfway-decent comeback! I musta been wrong, my old man has got to have done some good for you after all!"

Akane closed her eyes and sighed. "That's nice, Ranma. Could we maybe start on some Anything Goes, now?"

"But you still got quite a ways to go," he continued without missing a beat. "Akane, this _is_ Anything Goes. It's getting rid of what I figure is your worst weak spot."

"Oh, that's right, my 'hair-trigger temper'. Well, in case you forgot, you also mentioned a bunch of other problems. Do you think we could get in some actual fighting practice while you try to melt my ears off with insults?"

Ranma shrugged. "Maybe." _'Let's see, probably her second biggest problem is how bad her defense is, and her third is how she just tries to straight-out overpower whatever she's fighting. I ain't about to hit her, but maybe I could fire off the insults and dodge all her attacks while I sneak through her guard with a permanent marker? Wonder how many times I could fit 'uncute' or 'tomboy' onto her?'_

He snickered at the thought, before reluctantly dismissing it. Although she seemed to have made progress while he wasn't looking, he would need a lot more evidence before he'd believe her temper wasn't still her worst problem. That triathlon of humiliation would just be too much, too fast. "Okay, Akane." He gave a clipped half-bow, then shifted into his favorite relaxed stance. "Try and hit me." He grinned as he slid to one side, lazily avoiding Akane's first driving strike. "And please don't let yer ears melt. You'd look even weirder without them than you do now."

* * *

Forty-five minutes later, Ranma shook his head. "Well, whatever Pop's been doing really has helped your temper, but it ain't done nothing for your physical skills." He paused, considering this fact. _'Come to think of it... doesn't that kinda fit with what Shampoo described to me?'_ Part of her pretense of checking for Ranma, each time when the Tendos had called for a ramen delivery to make sure she wasn't off flying with him, had been to peek into the dojo. She hadn't been able to spend much time observing Akane's training, but the details she had gathered hadn't made much sense either to her or to Ranma when she reported them. _'Shampoo said she's been doing different stuff each time. Maybe Pop did that on purpose, trying to knock the worst edges off her temper. Doing different stuff all the time, never spending enough time on any one thing to learn a real lesson from it... that would be frustrating for anybody. If Pop could keep her at it long enough, it'd have to do some good for her temper. Not to mention helping her endurance.'_ He casually flicked Akane's incoming haymaker aside, using just the first two fingers on his left hand. _'She ain't any more skilled than she ever was, but at least she's got more staying power.'_

Akane launched three more strikes, all effortlessly dodged or blocked, while she put together her response. " 'Ain't done nothing'? Well, at least that makes him better than your teachers at Furinkan! They haven't done _you_ any good at _all_!"

Ranma shook his head in melodramatic despair. "Akane, Akane, Akane... the whole point of an insult is to hit yer opponent where it hurts. Talking to me about my school record...? Try again, Grasshopper."

"Fine, I'll try!" And try she did, charging in with all the speed and skill and coordination she could muster, trying her absolute hardest to connect even once.

Ranma wove throughout the strikes, yawning ostentatiously, checking the watch he wasn't wearing, and casually twisting one arm behind his back to scratch a spot normal people couldn't even reach. "Even for you, this is too slow and clumsy to be natural. You didn't taste-test your own cooking in Home Ec or nothing, did you?"

"Just for that I'm making your dinner tonight!" she retorted immediately, launching a fierce thrust kick.

Both shots struck home, the threat affecting Ranma where an insult wouldn't have, leaving him unable to completely dodge the kick. Akane's heel clipped his hip, sending him spinning toward the ground. He had already recovered control before reaching the floor, though, zipping back upright faster than he'd moved so far in the session.

He needn't have bothered; Akane had ceased all hostilities. She was just standing there with a smug smile of triumph. "Got you."

"Cheap shot, Akane," he grumbled. "In the kitchen at least, your hands really are deadly weapons. You might as well pull a gun in the middle of a fight as say something like _that._"

Akane flushed, fought down the anger, and stuck out her tongue. "Anything Goes, remember?"

"Yeah, yeah." Ranma heaved one more put-upon sigh, then said, "Seriously, though, congratulations. I never expected to see you do so well."

"Th- thanks," she said, looking down and hoping she wasn't blushing. "I know I've still got a long way to go."

"Yeah," he said slowly. "About that..."

"Huh? About what?" she asked, looking back at him again.

_'Should I say it or shouldn't I?'_ he wondered. _'I never thought Pop would've helped her make this much progress already.'_ He frowned slightly. _'Working with her on a special technique, my eye! That may've been what he let me think he was doing, and it may be what he told Akane he was doing, but he was really just helping her with her worst problem and he did it without even letting her realize.'_ A feeling of mingled exasperation and respect for Genma rose up within him. _'You could've at least been straight with me, old man. If I don't know what's really going on here, how am I supposed to do the best I can to help her?'_

"Ranma?" she queried.

"Just thinking about some stuff," he replied. "You wanna take a break from training for a little bit?"

Akane hesitated. Part of her wanted to keep fighting as long and hard as she could, didn't want to waste this opportunity. On the other hand, she'd been going all out against Ranma for three quarters of an hour now, and that burned her energy much faster than her usual training with Genma. Without taking judicious breaks she might not even last two hours, let alone the four Genma had her budgeting for a typical schoolday afternoon. "All right," she said, following behind Ranma as he walked over to the wall. The teens sat down. "So what were you thinking about?" she asked.

Ranma waved one hand in a circular gesture. "This. All this. Pop training you, the progress you've made, me tryin' to help you out too..." He sneaked a glance over toward her. "What you really want to get out of it all..."

Akane blinked. "What do you mean?"

"I mean we both know why you started training like this," he replied. "Cause you wanted to be better than Shampoo."

"So what?"

"Whaddaya mean, 'so what'? It's fine to train harder than normal cause you've got a goal in front of you, but that shouldn't be the only reason for doing real training."

"Look, Ranma, don't start with me on that!" Akane snapped, feeling anger mix with sadness at the loss of the earlier pleasant moment. "I have always done real training, because the training I did was real to me. It's not my fault nobody ever helped me fix the things I didn't know needed fixing!"

Ranma just frowned and shook his head. "Don't give me that! You had me for an example, you got to see how Pop and me trained together, you saw plenty of stuff with Ryoga, heck, you were there when Cologne trained me in the Amaguriken and the Hiryu Shoten Ha! An' every time up until now when I gave you a challenge, you just lost your temper and walked away. Don't act like there hasn't been all the help you coulda asked for, Akane."

"Get off your high horse," she growled. "Every time you gave me a challenge? You mean every time you made fun of my skills and treated me like I was a joke, and never said anything that would have let _anyone_ know what you really meant. _If_ that really was it any of those times."

"Well, excuse me for not making every little thing absolutely crystal clear, your highness! Ever stop and think that there's things I can't tell you cause I know you won't listen, you'll just blow up, beat me down, or start cryin' your eyes out!"

Akane's fists clenched. She shot to her feet, moving forward and around to stand in front of him glaring down. "Like WHAT?" she demanded.

Ranma, meanwhile, was already mentally cursing himself. _'Stupid, stupid, stupid. I was supposed to be trying to figure out whether she was ready to hear this, not get her all riled up and demanding it!'_

"If you've got something to say to me, then say it!" she continued, filling the gap left by his silence. She calmed slightly. "And if you were just shooting off your mouth, or if you were trying to see if you could get me mad, tell me."

_'That could be a good sign... she needs to know this, but does she need to know it now? Is it the right time? Should I give Pop more of a chance to work on her?' _Ranma continued to sit, stare up at her, and think furiously.

Akane took a firm grasp on her temper and fell silent as well, finding it easier than expected since he wasn't continuing to get in her face. She could wait at least for a little while. She didn't know what he was thinking about, but he seemed to be putting a lot of effort into it.

Ranma took a deep breath. _'I'll let her decide for herself.'_ "There's something, Akane," he said slowly. "Something you aren't gonna want to hear. Something that you're gonna have to accept. If all this stuff you've been doing with Pop, and with me today, means anything more to you than just pulling ahead of Shampoo, if you really want to take it farther than that and be a martial artist for real, then you're gonna have to face it sooner or later. So you tell me. Do you want me to say anything, or shut my mouth until I know you're ready?"

"I already said," Akane replied immediately. "If you've got something to say to me, then say it."

He took another few breaths, and thought of Kodachi. Later he would muse on the irony of this, that he should seek comfort and strength by remembering the Black Rose. But the fact of the matter was, he was very proud of how well he'd handled that encounter of two days past, and hopeful that what he'd done would turn out to be exactly what she needed. If he'd done so well with that girl, why couldn't he repeat the performance with one who had the added advantage of not being a Kuno? "Okay, Akane. Here goes." He stood up, carefully sidestepped so his back wasn't against the wall, and looked her square in the eye. "No matter how hard you train, you will _never _beat Shampoo in a fair fight."

Akane stared back at him, her eyes wide, her voice silent. Ranma waited a few seconds to see if she would say anything, then forged uneasily ahead. "I know it ain't what you want to hear, but it's just the way things are. She's trained for real her whole life, and I mean really for real, not just what she thought was okay. An' on top of that, she's an Amazon, and that means she's got access to high-powered techniques that you won't ever even have the chance to learn. There's just too big of a gap between the two of you, Akane, and she's already far enough along that it's only getting wider as time goes by. I know you don't—"

"Get out." She barely spoke the words above a whisper, but they cut through Ranma's rambling like a knife through hot butter.

He flinched, took a few steps backward, then said, "Look, I know—"

"I said get out!" No whisper this time, Akane shouted the words. "I don't need to hear this from you, Ranma. How _dare_ you start this out by saying it was something I needed to hear if I was going to be a real martial artist? When did _you_ ever give up and say someone was too strong for you!" She paused to take a breath, then bulldozed along before he could muster any real reply. "I've watched you defeat stronger and stronger people, over and over. You don't give up, you don't quit, you don't stop believing in yourself. But you'll stand there and tell me that's what I have to do!"

"It's not like that!" he protested, trying to find the words to explain further.

"It's exactly like that!" Akane blinked hot tears out of her eyes. "I don't need help from some stupid, perverted jerk who'll believe in Shampoo instead of me."

The words he'd almost mustered, to tell her he hadn't said she couldn't beat Shampoo, just that she couldn't do it on skill alone, scattered like leaves in the wind. "Bull! That's exactly what you need!" Ranma shouted back. "Someone who can tell it to you like it is, who ain't afraid to tell you stuff you don't want to hear!"

"Just, just go," she choked, turning away from him, hunching over with her face buried in her hands.

Once again he ignored the command, hesitating for a long moment, then stepping uneasily around and toward her. "Akane, come on, this ain't—YAAHH!" This last as the youngest Tendo uncoiled from her pose with the force of a striking snake. Ranma barely managed to dodge the blow that would have caught him square on the chin. "Very funny!" he spat back at her, staring angrily into her now-revealed visage. Yeah, he could see signs of sadness there, but the majority by far of her emotions were blistering fury. That pose had been nothing but a trap to lure him into arm's reach. "Fine, Akane, I'm gone!"

Putting actions to words, he strode over to the door, whipped it open, stalked through, and slammed it shut, all the while keeping careful note of Akane's position relative to him. She stood there, apparently content to let him leave under his own power. Ranma headed away from the dojo toward the house, but changed his mind before he'd taken his fifth step. "No way am I gonna waste my time just sitting around while I think about this," he muttered, turning and heading toward the koi pond.

He bent down to trigger his transformation... and paused, staring at his face reflected back at him. The image was surprisingly calm, he thought, but even as he did so he realized the anger was swiftly fading. He knelt there, lost in thought as the rest of it drained away.

"Guess that was a mistake," he decided. "She needed to hear it sometime, but now wasn't the time. Way to jump the gun, Ranma. I should've just kept my big mouth shut. Heck, I guess maybe I should've left it all up to Pop." He shook his head in mild disorientation. "I cannot believe I just said that. But... but then again, is it really so hard to figure? Akane's basically like a beginner, in all the ways that really count. I may've nearly outgrown Pop's teaching now, but he was the one who got me a lot of the way to where I am now. Why should it be so hard to think he could help Akane too?"

Giving this thought due consideration, he decided that there was no reason at all. "Okay, Pop. For now I guess I really will leave it up to you," he murmured. The words still felt odd on his tongue, but Ranma shrugged it off. He turned away from the pond and started walking toward the house. There was no need to transform and fly away as quickly as possible, no point in leaving his clothes lying at the edge of the pond for Kasumi to bring inside. The sky would wait long enough for him to head inside and change in privacy.

"I'm sorry, Akane," he muttered as he went. "Didn't mean to get you that upset. But it's true and the sooner you realize it, the better off you'll be." He still regretted having hurt her feelings, but at least this time there wasn't that sick sense of panic, confusion, and utter shame that he'd felt in the past when he'd done that. _'Progress for me, anyway,'_ he thought. _'I mean, obviously it'd be better not to hurt her, but at least if I do screw up it shouldn't make me feel like I've gotta move heaven and earth to try and fix it. Especially not in a situation like this, when she's the one not facing up to reality.'_ He nodded to himself as he passed through the door into the house, thinking about better ways to explain to Akane what he'd been trying to say, and how to make her see that her accusations had been totally wrong.

Unnoticed behind him, standing against the dojo wall five feet from the door he'd passed through, Nabiki watched with narrowed eyes.

* * *

_'And away he goes,'_ Nabiki thought bitterly as she stared out her window. Ranma's feathered form was visible for a moment longer, before he climbed high enough to be lost from view. She had waited outside for a few moments longer before heading inside after him, intending to time it so that he'd be flying away as she passed through the living room. No chance of him observing her or realizing she had already paid him the same favor.

However, Ranma had been delayed, stopping in the room the Saotomes shared to have a quick conversation with his father. Nabiki hadn't managed to overhear all of it, but what she had had been bad enough. _'You insulted her that badly, got her that ticked off, and you weren't even a little upset yourself? Not guilty, not panicked, not defensive, not angry? Just impressed that your father could be so sneaky and effective in training my little sister? And that from now on you 'weren't going to stick your nose into it'?'_ The middle Tendo grimaced. _'I'd like to think he was just clueless about this being something real, instead of another one of their childish little lovers' quarrels. But that's not it, not this time. He wouldn't have been so angry when he came out of the dojo if none of what happened inside it had been serious for him.'_

He had been angry, he had been caught up in what had happened between Akane and himself... but even as Nabiki had watched, he'd shrugged his way out of it. Had even done so unconsciously, unless she missed her guess. He hadn't had to make any kind of effort to put the encounter behind him. The knowledge weighted down Nabiki's chest as if some malevolent trickster had slipped a load of frozen, rusted lug nuts into her stomach.

"How dare you do this, Ranma," she growled, one fist clenching, her face twisting into a scowl more fearsome than any her little sister had ever worn. "How dare you just... just spread your damn wings and fly away! How dare you—" Abruptly she clamped her lips shut, only realizing then that she'd been speaking the thoughts out loud. She spent the next minute taking long, deep breaths, relaxing her muscles and restoring the outward image of carelessness. _'So this is how far you've pushed me? No farther, Ranma. It ends now. I'm not losing control, not of myself, not of you, not of anything in my world!'_

She took an even longer time after that to continue the relaxation process, calming herself, letting go of the wistful fantasy of engineering something truly horrendous, something that would shatter his newfound confidence and happiness with his altered curse. Perhaps it could still be done in the future, but as things stood now it probably wouldn't accomplish what she wanted—the risk was simply too great that Shampoo and Cologne would expend a few more resources of their own to make things better for him again.

Bad enough that her careful manipulation of Ukyo hadn't worked like it should. Oh, sure, the chef had played her part perfectly, as Nabiki had known she would; nobody could resist Junko if they didn't know ahead of time that they would need to. Ukyo had performed as well as Nabiki could have hoped, making an appeal that certainly should have had more results than it did. After everything the chef told him, everything Nabiki's underling in the Astronomy club had managed to overhear, Ranma's trust and comfort level with the Amazons ought to have been shattered. As far as Nabiki could tell, though, he'd only been gloomy, depressed, and worried for less than a day, flying back from one of his hours-long absences with all such emotions banished.

There was no real evidence that he hadn't been alone on that flight, that Shampoo had met him and somehow managed to quiet those fears. But after the things he'd said to her sister this afternoon, Nabiki wouldn't bet a bent yen piece against it. She supposed she'd know for certain when/if another, worse thunderbolt of Amazon retribution descended upon Ukyo.

She forced those thoughts away, focusing on something more productive: the course of action that seemed like the only reasonable one left. Even that fact left a sour taste that threatened to draw her lips back into a frown—it would have been better by far to have freely chosen this course, back when there had still seemed to be other viable options. None of her previous plans had worked, though... mostly because things were just moving too quickly. Nabiki was confident down to the deepest depths of her soul that she could still have turned this situation around, if only things hadn't changed so damnably _rapidly_. It hadn't even been a full six weeks since Shampoo came back to town!

She cursed the Amazons, their schemes, their resources, and above all the learning curve of one Ranma Saotome. Things had gone for so long without the central player in this tragicomedy changing in any meaningful way, and then one hammer-blow from Shampoo shattered that comfortable paradigm. Worse yet that Shampoo—and, Nabiki privately suspected, Cologne from the shadows behind her—had continued shuffling the pieces around faster than _anyone _could put them back together. Nabiki still wasn't sure of how far things had progressed between Amazon and 'airen', didn't know the exact lengths Shampoo had already gone to, but one thing had become painfully obvious: Ranma himself was convinced that things needed to change. With the speed at which he learned when he saw there was reason to, Nabiki knew that was one genie she simply couldn't stuff back into its bottle.

_'So it's time for me to be the one taking advantage of who Ranma Saotome is,'_ Nabiki thought grimly, allowing no trace of the emotion to appear on her face. She was calm, collected, in control. This might be her move of last resort, but it would certainly do the job. _'You had your chance, Shampoo. Time for me to be the one swinging the sledgehammer.'_

Ten minutes of silent preparation later, Nabiki activated her cell phone and entered a number she had memorized long ago, though she'd never once dialed it before now. A few moments later, a pleasant female voice greeted her politely. "Good afternoon, Mrs. Saotome," she said, interjecting just the right note of suppressed enthusiasm into her voice. "This is Nabiki Tendo speaking. Is there some place we can meet? I've got good news about Ranma."

* * *

Author's notes

This chapter has been a long time in coming. I hope you all found it worth the wait. Since it has been so long, I should probably remind you that in an earlier chapter Nabiki had decided to try hooking up Gosunkugi and Manami. If anyone was wondering where Junko's "I know you'd probably rather be with Gosunkugi" line came from, there's your answer. The original outline for this chapter included a scene that would have refreshed everyone's memory about this, but as you can probably guess, it was removed due to length issues. Sixty pages is quite long enough to be going on with, I think.

Another important acknowledgement: in the Astronomy Club scene, Ranma describes filtering out the red storm of Jupiter and viewing the ground below. Those of you sufficiently versed in astronomy will realize that as Jupiter is a gas giant, it doesn't really have 'ground'. However, considering who Ranma Saotome is, I think he'd still use this quick and easy way to describe what he was looking at, even if it was really just denser atmosphere.

Things in this chapter borrowed from other sources: Some of the imagery from Kodachi's final scene was influenced by Richard Lawson's Roses of Shadow. Also, someone else already came up with the 'in the kitchen Akane's hands are deadly weapons' joke, though I can't remember who or what story.

Thanks to everyone at the Refuge who gave C&C. Thank you for reading, and I hope I haven't strained your patience too badly... because the next chapter may take even longer. Much longer. I'll go ahead and reveal here that the next two chapters will cover the same span of time, showing events through the eyes of a different set of characters in the different chapters. I've got them both outlined, but I haven't decided yet whether I'll write them simultaneously or not. If I do, obviously you're going to be waiting a long time for chapter 7, but then again there won't be almost any wait at all between 7 and 8.


	7. Riding the Winds of change

Dream of the Earthbound

A Ranma ½ fanfic by Aondehafka

Disclaimer: the Ranmaverse characters owned by Rumiko Takahashi, and all that obligatory stuff. This story based on the anime, not the manga.

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Chapter 7: Riding the Winds of Change

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"Good day, Son-in-law," Cologne said amiably, a moment after he touched down to share the roof of the Cat Café with her. "Are you ready to begin your real training?"

"You haveta ask?" he shot back. "Yeah, I am." He glanced around the rooftop, empty but for the two of them. "What about Shampoo? Ain't she gonna be here today?" Normally the lavender-haired girl did her own Air training at the same time he did, though Cologne kept them separate as they practiced.

"She'll be here before long," the ancient Amazon replied. "There was something I wanted her to do for me, first."

Ranma shook his head, musing on the irony of it all. _'Geez, looks like Shampoo can't catch a break at all. Today's the first day in who knows how long that Mr. Tendo won't be calling to drag her over there on a delivery, and she still gets stuck with the short end of the stick. You'd think her own great-granny would be a little more sympathetic.'_ "What was that?" he asked. "Getting today's training props?"

"No, we won't be using any today."

"Not even the suit, one last time?" he asked, a little disappointed that a guess he'd made about the next step in the training was apparently wrong.

"No. Why would you think we'd still need that?" the Matriarch inquired. "By the end of your last practice three days ago, you were able to make even your most spectacular leaps without losing a single feather."

"Well, yeah, but I kinda got the impression that even that wasn't the absolute end-point," he explained. "That's what it felt like you were hinting at, at the end of Sunday's training. When you finally told me how long it usually takes someone to learn this stuff and how big of a help Shampoo's and my curse is." He paused for a moment, to bask once again in the knowledge that he'd shattered all the records. "You told me to think about this over the next few days when I was flying, focus on what I was really feeling, concentrate on the air and try to take the whole aura alignment thing from subconscious to conscious control." He gave her a curious stare. "Isn't that the reason why you said we should wait until today to move on to the next step?"

"Yes, that's correct," Cologne said. "But you don't need the suit for that, or any other tool. Sit down, sonny boy, and close your eyes."

"Huh? Okay," Ranma said, complying.

"Concentrate on the air around you," the Matriarch intoned. "Let your own energies bleed outward, harmonizing with the natural chi of the air. Feel the breeze as it blows, the ebb and flow of the sky's breath..."

After listening to the Matriarch ramble on in this vein for awhile, Ranma ventured to interrupt. "Are you waiting for me to realize you've been waving that stick around the whole time you were talking?"

Cologne blinked, and stopped spinning the staff. "Very good, Son-in-law, I didn't expect even you to notice that quickly."

Ranma shrugged and opened his eyes. "It's no big deal. When I'm a falcon, I can naturally feel that kinda stuff, sense currents in the air and all that. I've been working on applyin' that in my normal body since Sunday. I already know what it feels like, so it's not that big of a challenge." He frowned pensively at Cologne's staff. "But you know... I could feel the way you were stirring the air, but I couldn't hear anything. Why's that?"

"I was using an advanced Air technique to stop the soundwaves generated by the motion."

He considered the implications of this for a while. "So... for me to be able to feel it, that means the aura that I had linked into the air was extended out at least as far as where you're standing... and I could feel the way the stick was whirling around... but shouldn't I have been able to feel whatever it was in the air that blocked the sound?"

Cologne gave her very best ghoulish smile. "You're about a hundred years too soon to think you can go toe-to-toe with me, sonny boy." As if to prove her point, she spun the staff again, moving the wood so fast that it was little more than a blur in the air. By rights Ranma should certainly have been able to hear the whining hum generated by such velocity, but for all his ears could tell him Cologne might as well not even be armed.

Shaking off any hint of intimidation, he scowled and stretched out again, focusing every bit of his concentration into his fledgling senses, trying to detect whatever it was Cologne was using to keep the soundwaves from reaching his ears.

He was distracted very quickly by a more immediate concern. Ranma had time enough to sense the incoming body—also apparently silenced—hurtling through the air on a direct course toward him, to jump to his feet and whirl around, even to notice that Shampoo had apparently kicked free of her bike at the last second. And then, with a WHUMPH loud enough to shake the building below them, Amazon collided with Airen, smashing him prone to the rooftop and breaking her fall nicely. Unnoticed, her abandoned vehicle tumbled down into the alley behind the restaurant.

"...Okay, I admit it," he said after a few seconds had passed. "Obviously the bike routine has been toughening me up. That didn't even hurt."

"Good to hear it," Shampoo purred, snuggling closer and quickly destroying the sang-froid he had previously managed to maintain.

"Um... hey, Shampoo... come on, we, we need to... ACK!" Ranma exclaimed, as his squirming attempts to extricate himself quickly brought him into contact with dangerous territory. He froze, then continued in a voice nearly an octave higher, "C- c'mon, we gotta get to training!"

"Yes, Great-Granddaughter," Cologne said dryly, cutting the girl off before she could finish crafting a good 'marital arts training' comeback. "As amusing as this is to watch, remember that there's more at stake here than just teasing him and having a good time."

Shampoo sighed, but drew back and off him. "Okay, okay. Up you get, Ranma," she said, extending her hand and helping him to a sitting position. She drew a few feet back from him and settled down facing Cologne.

"More at stake?" Ranma asked, glancing back and forth between the two Amazons. "What's that supposed to mean, Shampoo?"

She blinked. "Um... actually, Shampoo not sure. I think she mean we should no delay training, because you only has few hours some days of week you can sneak over here for it." Shampoo sighed. "Is true, after all."

"Is that what you meant, Granny?" he wanted to know.

"Close enough," Cologne replied. "Although I was more thinking about the fact that Shampoo herself was the one who decided to offer you this training, which really makes it more her responsibility than mine to see you succeed in it. She ought to be focusing on that, not spending a half-hour trying to break you free of your fear of girls."

"Hey, that is not fair at all!" Ranma protested. "I ain't afraid of nothin', especially not girls!" Noting the politely incredulous look on Cologne's face, and Shampoo's rolled eyes and shaken head, he continued, "I just got a... a healthy... respect for consequences and possible danger situations. That's something any martial artist oughta have!"

"Right, right, I think that line might even be better than something your father could come up with," Cologne retorted. "Not afraid, are we? Not nervous at all?" She snorted. "I'll believe _that_ on the day your heartrate doesn't speed up when you catch sight of my great-granddaughter." She gave him a sly look. "Of course, there could be other reasons for a reaction like that, one emotion in particular that sometimes has fear mixed in it but is a very different beast..."

Ranma gulped, unable to stop himself from glancing away from the old Amazon to the younger one. His traitorous heart did give an extra couple of jumps at the sight of Shampoo, currently doing her best to appear both appealing and nonthreatening. A hopeful gleam was in her eyes as well, though Shampoo didn't intend or realize it, and that seemed to strike him even harder than what she was trying to show him. "C- can we just get on with the training?" he squawked, tearing his gaze away again with a valiant effort, telling himself it was all just the old ghoul messing with his head.

Cologne frowned at him. "A martial artist should face the honest truth, Son-in-law," she pronounced. "Deception may have its place in some facets of the Art, but never self-deception. Denial will do nothing but chain you down."

"So who's denying anything? Not me!"

"Right," the Matriarch shot back. "Then I suppose—"

"Ranma." Shampoo focused all her attention on him, ignoring the fact that she'd just interrupted her great-grandmother. She didn't know what the Matriarch was angling for, but she did know she couldn't keep silent now. That hunted, defensive look didn't belong anywhere near her husband's face. "I, I not... I don't want you be afraid of me. You no have to be."

"Look, I'm not... I, I..." Ranma's heart gave a different kind of lurch this time as he returned his attention to Shampoo, plunging downwards in his chest as he saw the pain in her eyes. He took a few deep breaths, then said carefully, "Shampoo... I'm not. You heard her—she was just messin' around with my head, puttin' words in my mouth. That ain't how it really is. When have I ever run from you?"

Shampoo stared back at him. "All the time, when Shampoo have old curse."

"Exactly. An' you ditched that little piece of hell on earth for good, got both of us the biggest trade-up in three thousand years of Amazon history." He grinned at her. "And speaking of which, there was the time way back in the beginning, when I thought you were tryin' to kill me. Don't forget that."

"Would rather do so! Why you bring it back?" she huffed, though she felt the faintest beginning of an answering grin tugging at her lips.

"Cause both of those things are in the past. Neither one of 'em is who you are, and neither has anything to do with you being a girl." She was smiling now, if faintly, and that further bolstered Ranma's spirits. He flashed her his most confident grin and proclaimed, "I ain't afraid of girls, and I'm definitely not afraid of you." At this she broke out into a full-fledged smile, as big and bright as he'd ever seen from her. His heart gave another couple of quicker thumps at the sight, but he ignored it. Surely any guy would react the same if a girl as cute as Shampoo smiled at him like that.

Cologne let the moment stretch just long enough, then cleared her throat to draw the teens' attention back to her. "Well, that's good to hear, sonny boy. I had one more thing to tell you before you begin training in the first Air style technique."

"Which is?" Ranma said, turning reluctantly away from Shampoo's open, honest happiness, hoping that this wasn't going to be more of Cologne's mind games.

"That I'm not going to be the one training you. Shampoo is."

"What!" both teens exclaimed simultaneously.

"Great-Grandmother, is you serious?" Shampoo continued, finding more words before Ranma did. "Is not funny!"

"Well, that's good to hear, because I wasn't joking," Cologne replied.

Ranma opened his mouth, then closed it again, deciding that the best thing to do here was sit back and watch the byplay rather than interject his own voice. After all, what could he say? 'Would you please quit messing with my head, old ghoul'? 'Quit trying to call my bluff, I said I wasn't scared of her and I meant it'? 'Teach me yourself, I ain't about to settle for second best'? As that last one crossed his mind he grimaced and shook himself, wanting to cast it well away, along with the image of what would inevitably follow a comment like that. _'Geez, as much fun as she's apparently having by jerking me around, maybe it really is better to learn the moves from Shampoo.'_

"But Great-Grandmother, that not right at all!" the young Amazon protested. "Ranma biggest reason for learn this style is so he can use it in falcon body! I never teach anybody anything before, not even little basic thing! How you say Shampoo have to start now, something so big? Ranma deserve better than that!"

"And you don't want to look bad in front of him either, no doubt," Cologne said dryly. "I'm afraid my mind is quite made up, Shampoo. Your husband decided for himself that time wasn't of the essence in this training. Or have you forgotten whose idea it was for him just to sneak over here when he could do so without letting the Tendos find out?"

"But... but..." Shampoo's mouth gaped feebly open and closed as she tried to muster new and better arguments.

"And where are you gonna be during all this?" Ranma challenged, annoyed all the more that Cologne wasn't just jerking him around, but also her own flesh and blood. Even Genma had let him have a few hours to get used to the idea of helping Akane train, not to mention the fact that his father had tricked him into thinking it was his own idea. "Sitting back and staring at her, watching her and making her more nervous while she tries something you just sprung on her outta nowhere?"

"Now that you mention it... no." Cologne grinned, then blurred, retreating to the rooftop's edge in the blink of an eye. And then she was gone.

A long silence stretched in the wake of her departure. Ranma broke it at last, heaving a sigh and turning back to face Shampoo. She seemed less distressed now, always a good sign in a sensei, but she was still clearly nervous. "So how often does she dump stuff like that onto you, Shampoo?"

"This first time she ever put Shampoo in situation like this," the lavender-haired girl answered. "At least, where more than just me is depend on what I do. But there is other times when she turn up the heat under me all of sudden. Great-Grandmother is great believer in pressure-cooker type of training, put more and more pressure on student, just make sure you not ever go over their limit. Is great way to get better fast, so long as you no push too hard." Shampoo grimaced and shook her head. "To be fair, Shampoo not think she ever do so much to me as when she teach Kachu Tenshin Amaguriken to you."

"Huh. Well, cheer up," Ranma said. "That must mean she believes you can do this, right?"

Shampoo blinked, then the remaining traces of anxiety began to melt toward a smile. "Ranma..."

"And even if you can't do a good job teaching, it ain't the end of the world," he continued reassuring her. "After all, I'll still be able to learn the moves from you. I'm just that good."

The smile remained on Shampoo's face, though one eye had developed a noticeable twitch. "Airen say the sweetest things sometime," she gritted. _' I'll show you, Ranma Saotome. I'll do just as good a job teaching this to you as Great-Grandmother did to me! No, even better—I'm darn well going to find a way to shift some of this pressure off me and onto you! '_

"...So you want to start or what?" Ranma said a minute later. "Just do whatever Cologne did with you. I'm sure I'll pick up on it even if you don't get it perfect."

"In case Ranma not think it through, this not just test for him!" she retorted. "Probably not, anyway. Shampoo sure Great-Grandmother will pay close attention to how good I do, not just you. So let me take time I need to think!"

"Okay, okay, sorry. I guess I really wasn't thinking about that," he admitted. _'So she thinks she might need to handle things differently when it's her teaching me, instead of the old ghoul teaching her? Makes sense, I guess. After all, Shampoo ain't exactly a shriveled up prune with a few hundred years' experience in her back pocket.'_

He settled down to wait patiently, or at least patiently for him when there was a new technique in the offing. Just as he opened his mouth to suggest that maybe Shampoo could tell him what Cologne had done and he could help her decide what kind of alterations needed to be made to the program, the Amazon spoke again. "All right. Shampoo think she have good idea how to do this. You remember that first technique is Buzzing Fist, yes?"

"Yeah."

"Is simple technique and not very good on its own, but is good building block for more. I will do best I can to teach, Ranma must do best he can to learn."

"Like you had to tell me that," he said with a dismissive grin.

"Shampoo know that. No complain, Ranma, you is getting off easy. Great-Grandmother give me much longer talking at first, but we about to get started for real right now. Scoot over closer." She moved forward to meet him halfway. "Hold out hands to mine," she continued once he was in place, extending hers with the palms facing down.

Ranma was slower to comply this time, but he did reach out and take her hands in his. "Not like that," she corrected him. "This not romantic date or nothing. You not supposed to hold hand like that. Just put them flat under Shampoo's, palm to palm."

A bit relieved by the correction, he adjusted his grip. "For this to work, you has to be able to feel what happening to the air," Shampoo continued. "Look like you already got that part, yes?" Grinning, she elaborated, "You able to sense me coming down on bike when Great-Grandmother signal, even though not until is too late."

"Yeah, and next time I'll notice in time to dodge," he shot back, not really wanting another digression just now. Not that he was scared, or anxious, or nervous, or anything at this position... it was just that he didn't want to waste more time before getting to the actual training. Nor was it appealing to think of Shampoo pouncing on him out of nowhere because Cologne had told her to. "Come on, let's get started already."

"Hmmph. Should just start now no explanation and let Ranma try figure out what happening," she grumbled back at him. "Okay, student, listen good. I going to use very, very low-power Buzzing Fist on one hand, do nothing on other. That give you way to look at difference, get good idea of what happening with technique, try and learn to do it on you own."

Ranma didn't bother to ask which hand, certain that it would be obvious once she initiated the move. Sure enough, a faint but clearly discernable buzz started up around Shampoo's right hand. He focused all his attention onto his own left hand, exploring the odd sensation as best he could and ignoring for now the suggestion to compare and contrast against his right.

Within the first twenty seconds, the sensation wasn't feeling as strange anymore and he'd picked up a number of important details. For one thing, the buzzing was strongest against the areas of his skin nearest to Shampoo's. The vibration faded almost to nothingness near the middle back of his hand, and was indiscernible below his wrist. There was no vibration at all in whatever minute amount of air was trapped between their two palms. Then there was the difference between Shampoo's hand and his own, just barely noticeable along the edges of overlap. He had to strain his senses to be sure, but he could sense that the air immediately next to Shampoo's skin was still, with the vibration beginning a few millimeters out, whereas around his hand that cushion of motionless air didn't exist.

Another thing that dawned on him, a bit later than it probably should have, was that he was making all these observations through his sense of touch. That wasn't right—he was supposed to be using his newborn ability to synchronize his aura with the air, to sense what was happening that way. It was difficult, though; the feel of the pulsating air against his skin was much more distracting than Cologne's droning about the metaphysics of the sky had been. After all, touch was the most immediate, the most basic of the senses.

This fact was brought home as he tried to shift his focus away from that sense. Without warning Shampoo's left hand moved, her index finger sliding along his wrist in a long, slow caress.

Ranma's eyes, closed for better concentration, shot wide open. Almost as quickly he broke contact and zipped backward, giving up five times the ground he'd covered earlier when meeting her in the middle. "Sh- Shampoo!" he protested.

The Amazon said not a word in response, but her expression spoke plainly enough. Ranma clamped his mouth shut against whatever else had been on its way out, seeing one piercing moment of pain, disappointment, and hurt.

In the next moment Shampoo's face closed, settling into a hard, flat mask. "I sorry, Ranma. I not mean to jab red-hot needle through you."

Despite the words and the harsh cast to her face, he could still see the true sentiments in her eyes. "Whatever," Ranma said uncomfortably. "I mean, you didn't... I mean... you just kinda surprised me. What'd you expect, catching me off-guard like that?"

"Expect that it would break you concentration, take you mind off one hand and onto other." Shampoo looked away. "Not that you act like I try to take that hand off at wrist."

"Come on, I wasn't tryin' to act like you were hurting me!" he shot back. "Heck, with all the training I've done pain is no big deal! It was just... you know, unexpected. Different. That's why I kinda flinched."

"And is that always how you going to react to something 'different'?" Shampoo asked quietly, still not looking at him, her hands still outstretched in empty air though her arms had slumped a little and her fingers were curled back against her palms. The tone of the question, especially the way she'd spoken the last word, made him squirm in worse discomfort than he'd felt before jumping backwards. He didn't usually catch on to those situations where girls were saying one thing and meaning another, but somehow, he was sure that her 'different' meant something other than its usual definition. For the life of him, though, he couldn't say what that was.

He did know the answer he wanted to give her, though. "No way! Anything Goes is about learning, changing, and adapting to new stuff!"

"Anything Goes," Shampoo repeated bitterly. "That where you learn this in first place, Ranma. From Genma and Akane."

Still wishing for some kind of road-map to this conversation, he floundered along as best he could. "What? Learn Anything Goes from Akane? That don't make any sense at all, Shampoo. That clumsy chick's got nothing to teach me. And as for Pop... yeah, he was pretty much the guy with all the answers for a long time, but I'm past that now. There may still be a few tricks he knows that I don't, an' I guess it wouldn't be too unbelievable if he manages to help me out once or twice more in my life, but the days when he was the master and I was the impressionable little student are long gone. I'm walking my own path. Why the heck do you think I'm here right now?"

"Shampoo hope is for just that reason," she said quietly, turning her head and raising her eyes to him again. "You going to come back now and face this, Ranma? Not run again?"

"That's right," he said as confidently as he could, retracing the distance his blurring retreat had covered, and sliding his hands back under hers. She paused for one long moment more, staring into his eyes with quiet, probing, guarded consideration, before slowly uncurling her fingers to once more rest her palms flat against his. Letting out an unconscious breath of relief, Ranma asked, "So... if you don't mind my askin', how does, er, what you did fit into this training anyway?"

"What you think? Distraction make for challenge, Airen." The ghost of a smile crossed Shampoo's face. "Need to be something to replace challenge I had from Great-Grandmother, challenge you not get from me. Think how small her hands is, how little... um... surface area to work with. You would not want me to go easy on you, yes?"

Ranma was mildly proud of himself for actually giving the question thought, rather than immediately blurting out a knee-jerk response. "...No. No, I wouldn't," he said once he was sure he meant it.

-----------------------

The air was thin and chill about him, reduced to the barest minimum that could easily fill his lungs and lift his wings. The red light of sunset glittered on clouds far below him. As he flew in long slow circles the sun filled his vision for a moment, to be replaced by red sky, then purple, then the first stars of evening. Ranma paid little attention to the sights, focusing only enough of his mind on them to appreciate that, once again, he was experiencing something almost nobody else ever would.

His thoughts were more concerned on his first real training session with a teacher his own age. _'Sure wasn't expecting that for today,'_ he thought ruefully. _'Wonder whether Shampoo or I was more surprised?'_ It wasn't the only thing he wondered, but it was an easier question than the big one lurking in the back of his thoughts. He pondered the issue for two complete revolutions, eventually deciding that the answer wasn't important at all—what mattered was that both of them needed to learn not to assume they knew what was going on in the Matriarch's mind.

With one easier lesson learned and tucked safely away in his mind, Ranma turned his attention outward, putting away introspection for the moment. He climbed higher, then higher again, concentrating on the purely physical challenge of flight in the rarefied air. Ten minutes passed before he sank back to a more hospitable altitude, cold and weary but satisfied at how he'd successfully pushed himself... and ready to spiral down toward something deeper.

"Did I achieve anything at all?" This question was the skin of the matter, not its heart, but that he could even ask it was strange enough. The Buzzing Fist might not be like anything he'd ever done before, but it was a simple, basic building block toward the real techniques of its style. In his long years of training, Ranma had encountered and mastered numerous things that could be described in such a way. He couldn't think of even one time when he'd worked on one for three solid hours without knowing he'd made progress.

Of course, none of those training times had included a sensei like Shampoo. Ranma shook his head ruefully as he thought back to the rooftop of the Cat Café, remembered how her face had showed that one unguarded moment of pain when he first skittered backward in shock, how it had taken three quarters of an hour before her smile regained its usual width, and how big that smile had grown as he continued to jump and twitch but never again pull back from her. She had increased the challenge level early on, refusing to limit herself to the pattern with which she'd begun. At any given moment the only constant had been Shampoo's hands on his; either or both could be vibrating the air, and either or both might suddenly shift in his to give one more of those teasing, distracting touches. Why they should be so much more distracting than the basic, constant contact between their hands, Ranma could not say.

He considered the thought of shiatsu. This theory would at least explain why each stroke of her finger along his wrist had caused his heart to jump up in his throat, why the effect had seemed to grow stronger, not weaker, over time. It could make sense of the fact that even now, in a body that didn't _have_ hands, he could feel the sensation so clearly. But the problem with that idea was that it would also make his first reaction perfectly reasonable. If Shampoo really had been using some shiatsu trick to cause his blood-pressure and heartrate to skyrocket, his mouth to go dry as cotton while his brow broke into a cold sweat, then she ought just to have been amused at how well it worked. Not hurt through and through.

Ranma toyed for a few moments with a variation of the idea, that Shampoo had been hitting a pressure point without even realizing it. It didn't take long to discard this as pure wishful thinking, a dodge to excuse himself from facing the truth. He turned away again for one last moment and sank into a quick descent. Once the air had warmed up enough around him, he sighed and spoke the cold truth aloud. "I said I wasn't afraid... but I guess that wasn't true."

A hundred memories flew through his mind, whirling and interweaving like a flock of crows. Akane faced him in the dojo and challenged him that he was too chicken to kiss her, though her own words were halting and choked with nerves. Shampoo actually did kiss him, seizing her opening while he panicked in the wake of her second defeat. Kodachi laid him out flat on the roof, paralyzed while she primped and readied herself for her own first kiss. Akane had saved him that time, and had done so again when Shampoo in cat form herded him into the bathtub, then jumped in herself to change back and take it from there.

One memory in particular rose up now from the depths where he usually kept it locked away. He and Akane were making their way back from Ryugenzawa, heading to the train station that would give them passage to Nerima. Ranma, still riding the high of relief that nobody had been hurt, that he'd managed to safeguard Akane through it all, had reached back and held her hand as they walked along. Even at such a time as that, it had taken almost all his strength to do so. "Not afraid of girls," he murmured bitterly, "...yeah, right."

At least he could say it here, alone among the clouds. When he'd been on the rooftop facing Shampoo, those words never would have come. Ranma pondered that as he crossed the next mile of sky, trying to work out all the reasons for this. It would be one thing if he'd only kept quiet about that truth because he didn't want to hurt her... but Cologne had said that self-deception had no place in anyone's life, and Ranma found himself agreeing. It wasn't just Shampoo and her great-grandmother he'd been trying to reassure, when he'd proclaimed so strongly that he wasn't afraid. He'd said those things to her because he himself wanted to say them. Wanted them to be true.

"The real kicker is, I know it should be," he grumbled under his breath. "The stuff I said to her, that's how it ought to be for real. Jumping five feet backward when she did something so small... that's just plain stupid. Cologne could've been a lot more diplomatic about it, but she had the right idea when she got on my case about being afraid of girls..."

His eyes widened and his beak clicked closed. Was that the real reason the Matriarch had ducked out of the training session, leaving it to Shampoo to handle? He considered the idea for a few minutes, eventually concluding that it was probably going too far to say it was the 'real' reason, but it almost surely had been part of her motivation.

"So was I fooling anybody there, other than myself?" he wondered next. "I said that stuff to Shampoo, trying to make her feel better. And... and I wasn't totally lying. At least, the important stuff was true. There used to be some real reasons for me to be scared of her, but those are gone now. What's left isn't anything that ought to make me afraid." His mind flitted back to Shampoo's grand entrance, and how much nicer it had felt to be pinned under her without the bicycle involved. "A healthy respect for consequences and possible danger situations... yeah, that sounds good. Definitely sounds a lot better than panicking just cause something's different from what I'm used to."

Once again a memory of the afternoon bobbled up in his mind. "That where you learn this in first place, Ranma. From Genma and Akane," she had said. "Don't know if she was right about Akane," he mused. "It's not like I jumped back because I thought Shampoo was about to pound me for being perverted. And even with Pop I'm not sure it's fair to say it's all his fault. Sure, he dragged me all over the place to learn the Art, encouraged me to always keep my focus on training, not let any distractions in. But I never really tried to fight that, I was happy enough to go along with what I knew how to do and ignore stuff that was a mystery." He chuckled ruefully. "At least until we landed here and it all got right in my face. Even then I kept it up as long as I could.

"So it looks like the old ghoul was right on all counts," he admitted. "It's past time I got over this stupid problem." Continuing with Shampoo's training plan would undoubtedly prove stressful, but it would teach him more than one lesson he needed to learn.

In fact, Ranma suspected it was already working. Those hours had not been enough to put him at his ease with Shampoo's tactic, but now that he had taken a good look at the bigger picture he could see one area where they apparently had helped him. Deliberately, he thought back again to the walk away from Ryugenzawa with Akane's hand in his own. It had taken so much of his courage to do that, to show Akane that he was glad she was safe and sound. Even when she'd accepted the gesture without protest, it hadn't reassured him enough to let him relax any. The most he'd been able to do was continue as he'd begun.

That wasn't at all what Akane had done, though. It had taken him well over a week to realize the full implications, at which point he'd pushed them as far out of mind as he could.

He had been so nervous at that time, so tense, so uncertain of what he was doing... and he'd fully expected her to feel the same. Everything he and Akane had shared up till then agreed; if it had meant anything to her, she should have been at _least_ as anxious as he was. But she hadn't said or done anything—hadn't reacted in _any_ way—as if it mattered to her. Even through the trembling in his hand, he'd been able to tell that her own was relaxed; his own pulse had hammered, hers had thrummed at an utterly normal tempo.

The pain of this thought was why he usually kept the memory locked away. But now, gliding along with the red light of sunset at his back, he barely felt a twinge as he contemplated the matter. All the remembered pain and regret of it seemed to have leached away, and with surprise he found himself thinking that he'd gotten off lucky. Far better to have Akane quietly humor him than get flustered and smash him to the ground.

"So now I can answer the question I started out with," he decided. "Yeah, I _did_ make some progress today. Don't know if any of it was actually on the Buzzing Fist, but this is more important anyway. More important than all of the Air Style if it comes to that." But that didn't mean he was going to slack off from working to master the style. If Shampoo could modify the training so that it worked toward two totally different goals at once, Ranma Saotome could certainly rise to the simultaneous challenges!

Nodding decisively, he tilted his wings and started his final descent. He passed through the clouds and saw the lights of Nerima twinkling in the dusk below him, cheering for their favorite son and welcoming him back. Sinking lower and lower and straining his eyes, he caught sight of the Tendo home far off in the distance and adjusted his course accordingly.

One door was open and there was a light on in the dojo, he saw as he drew nearer. Hopefully that just meant someone had left it on for him, not that Akane was in there practicing. Things had been tense and silent with the tomboy ever since their last encounter in the dojo. Akane hadn't hit him in the days since then, or yelled at him, or accused him of things he hadn't done, but she'd made it quite clear that she hadn't forgiven or forgotten. _'At least this time her temper tantrum hasn't got her sulking up on the roof while everybody else panics and runs all over town looking for her,'_ Ranma thought, settling down on top of the dojo over the open door and listening. No sounds of strenuous exercise, not even the relative quiet of a kata or weight training rather than brick-breaking. He hopped off the roof, sinking in a quick turn that carried him through the doorway into the building.

The door whipped shut behind him almost as soon as he'd passed through it.

Caught completely off-guard, for the first time Ranma utterly lost control of his flight. His smooth passage through the air shattered into a scrambling failure to stay aloft. He hit the floor with a bounce and rolled for three body lengths before he could stop, get back to his feet, and turn around to face whatever threat had decided to ambush him here.

He hadn't expected it to be a girl he barely recognized, staring down at him with surprise and remorse. "Oh, no! Ranma, I'm sorry, I didn't think it would surprise you that much! Are you okay?" she exclaimed, though she was careful to keep her voice down.

Ranma stared at the girl for a few moments, confirming that yes, he was remembering correctly—this was one of Nabiki's friends, not Akane's. _'Somebody ought to get it through at least one Tendo girl's head that turning into a falcon doesn't make me made out of glass,'_ he grumbled to himself. Nodding, he fluttered back into the air, winging his way through a quick, tight circle to illustrate that everything was still working properly. Then he landed, touching down only a couple of feet away from the girl, and regarded her with his most piercing stare.

"Okay, that's good," Junko said with a sigh of relief. "Um... could you please change back now? I need to talk to you about something."

He kept the stare up for a few more seconds, then turned and flew to the corner with its modified thermos. He was pleased to note that the girl turned around without prompting, facing away so as not to watch. Ranma transformed and pulled on his clothes as quickly as possible, keeping one eye on the girl all the time, and she didn't even try to sneak a peek. _'So, as usual, I'm one hundred percent innocent, not done anything perverted at all. That probably means Akane's already randomly on her way out here to 'catch me in the act','_ he thought with a grimace. "Yo, what's this about? Nabiki too busy to do this herself, whatever it is?"

Junko blinked. She hadn't expected him to remember her without any help; the number of times Ranma had seen her in her official role as Nabiki's lieutenant could be counted on the fingers of one hand, and each time he'd had plenty of more important things to occupy his mind. _'Well, it's not like the boss didn't tell us he was starting to use his head more often and better.'_ "Actually, yes," she replied. "Nabiki, Akane, Kasumi... they're all busy inside the house. So are your father and Mr. Tendo if they're back yet, but I don't think they are."

"No surprise there," he muttered. Early this afternoon Mr. Tendo had been sweeping up the yard, and had discovered a windblown flyer for the grand opening that very day of a new bar. He and Genma had immediately set out in search of it. If the place really was going to be serving drinks at the promotional prices listed on that sheet, Ranma didn't expect them to be back until the place shut down, threw them out, or began charging normal fees. "So what's going on inside that's got everybody tied up? And what's it got to do with... Nah, don't tell me, let me guess." He heaved a deep sigh. "Some new fiancée has finally tracked me down an' showed up to stake her claim."

"No," she said with a smile, "but you aren't completely wrong. It is an important woman in your life, Ranma."

He just stared blankly back at her. Not a new fiancée... the girl wouldn't be smiling like that if it were one of the old ones... maybe something good had happened to Kasumi? Maybe she'd been offered a scholarship to Tokyo U or something, and Nabiki wanted to get everyone's cooperation in persuading her to accept it? Well, if it was something like that he'd be more than happy to help. "What're you talking about?"

Junko's smile dimmed as she took a deep breath. "Before I say anything else, here. You need to read this and memorize all these facts. Everyone knows you don't pay a lot of attention in school, Ranma, but they also all know how much you can do when it's important enough for you to really try. So you need to do that now."

He took the piece of paper she was holding out and began scanning it, looking for answers as to why it was so important, why she had spoken with such unwavering conviction. Even as he committed each statement on the paper to memory, as he slotted each piece of the puzzle into place, his confusion grew. The 'facts' on the paper formed a clear, coherent whole, but nothing in the story they assembled told him why any of it was needed. _'Six weeks ago Happosai dragged Pop, Mr. Tendo, and me away on a training journey... The two of us gave him the slip by going back to China... we heard about a legendary training ground that can open up whole new worlds to martial artists... I picked up my curse there so I could take the airborne part of Anything Goes to new heights, Pop decided not to get one... What is all this?'_

When he repeated the question out loud, Junko said, "It's what you need to know before you go back in there. Nabiki already did all the hard work for you, the boss built a story without any holes and told her a lot of it. You just need to fill in the gaps."

"Her? Her who?" he demanded.

She gave him the most determined stare she could muster, and replied, "Your mother."

Silence reigned in the dojo for what felt like hours. At last, through frozen lips, Ranma mumbled, "My mother."

Junko nodded.

"My mother's here," he said, louder this time.

She nodded again.

"Nabiki brought her here, and made sure she knew that this time I'm not on a training trip, that if she waits long enough today I'm gonna come walking through that door." The words were more growled than spoken.

Junko swallowed nervously. She reminded herself of the conversation she'd had with her friend, the things Nabiki had revealed to her after keeping quiet for so long. Her spine stiffened, and this time she refused to content herself to a mere nod. "That's right."

"I see." Ranma closed his eyes, chuckling bitterly even as the hand that held the paper clenched into a white-knuckled fist. "And did it ever occur to Nabiki that Pop's also coming home tonight? That he's still got the curse that _this,_" he brandished the tortured document, "says don't exist! That as soon as cold water does its thing, there's damn well going to be a hole in Nabiki's stupid story big enough to drive a panda through!"

"Huh?... Don't you think the boss is smart enough to think of that?" Junko shot back, a little unprepared for this particular attack. She'd expected Ranma to demand to know what right Nabiki thought she had to interfere in the lives of the Saotome family like that, had been braced to meet that accusation. Well, this one was easier to answer anyway. "She's got twenty underclassmen in the streets all around the house, waiting to intercept him when he and Mr. Tendo get back. They'll tell him the full story and give him all your waterproof soap so he can stay human until the Nannichuan the Amazons ordered gets in."

Ranma's mouth gaped open and closed as he tried to re-center himself, not having expected the swift, competent answer. "So that's why there were more people in the street than usual," he muttered. Shaking his head and forcibly pushing aside his irritation at having his remaining soap commandeered like that—after all, surely there could be no more noble cause than keeping his mother from learning the truth about 'Ranko' and 'Mr. Panda'—he continued, "Huh. Really. Sounds like Nabiki's gone to a lot of trouble to do this. So, next question." Taking two steps forward and staring furiously down into the shorter girl's eyes, he snapped out, "Where the _hell_ does she think she gets off doing it at all? Any of it!"

"Why don't I ask you the same question?" Junko shot back, refusing to give ground... not that it would have been easy to do so, as she'd been standing with her back against the door this whole time. "Nabiki said you gave her and her sisters a long song-and-dance about the reason you changed your curse was so that you could finally see your mother. Then Mr. Saotome pointed out his own curse was still a problem, and you decided it was okay to let that meeting slide again. Even after it turned out that you could get his curse cured really soon, you were still planning to wait who knows how many months before you went back to her. Why, Ranma? Why did you do that?"

He stared grimly back at her. "Because Pop was supposed to take me back to Mom when I was a man among men, an' I've still got way too many problems in my life. Let's list a few of 'em, shall we? Crazy rivals—although I _hope_ that none of the ones I got left would try to get to me by going through Mom." He felt a twinge of bitter satisfaction as the girl flinched and paled at the declaration. "Multiple fiancées with a buncha tangled honor ties that I'm still not sure how to straighten out. And last, but definitely not least, is how I got people making big, important decisions for me without even bothering to ask first. So you can go ask Nabiki just how much of a 'man among men' it makes me when she takes away the chance to go back to Mom on my own."

By now Junko's face was ashen, her mouth gaping open, her eyes wide with dismay. The things she and Nabiki had spoken of, the carefully-hidden feelings her boss had finally laid bare before her... these weren't forgotten, exactly, but Junko now realized that they weren't going to be enough to answer all of Ranma's accusations. Once again she wished she had Manami's intellect; maybe then she could have come up with some of these things on her own, could have shared them with Nabiki during their talk. Maybe they could have worked out a better way.

Any chance of that was long gone, though, and she was just going to have to wing it. "I... Ranma, I'm sorry... Neither one of us thought of any of that." Junko hung her head, feeling her own inadequacies weigh her down once more. "It's not Nabiki's fault. She was too caught up in some other stuff to see any of those things."

Despite himself Ranma felt bitterness give way to confusion. "Not her fault? She didn't see? What the heck kind of other stuff is supposed to make all this okay?"

"I didn't say it was okay, just that it's not fair to blame Nabiki. All she could really see was her own part of this, Ranma... that's all anyone can when they're personally involved in something. I'm the one who could have done better, but I just listened to her side and thought that was all there was to see." Junko took a deep breath and met his eyes again. "But that doesn't mean the stuff she said was wrong, and you need to understand that. You need to realize that holding back like you were wasn't just hurting Saotomes. Nabiki, Akane, Kasumi... none of them will ever see their mother again. Can you imagine what they'd give, how far they'd go, for even one last chance to do that? And here you were, someone who'd thought his mother was gone for good, and then you learn that you_ can_ see her again, that she's out there waiting and hoping for the chance to have her son back in her life again! And you just kick back, relax, and let her wait. Can you imagine how much that hurt them, even if they didn't show it? Maybe even if they didn't let themselves admit it?"

Ranma took a while to answer. When he did, his voice was unusually subdued. "I remember. Nabiki said something like that, way back when Mom first showed up here. Of course, she followed up by hitting me for a few thousand yen so as not to bust me to Mom... but I guess for her that don't necessarily take away any of the meaning from the first part."

Junko swallowed. "It... wouldn't surprise me if she was planning to hit you up for a lot more yen than that, as payment for services rendered once all this stuff settles down and works out." Somehow, behind those words Ranma could clearly hear the truth that Junko knew Nabiki was planning exactly that. He frowned and opened his mouth, but before he could say anything she hurried along. "I'll talk to her, I'll tell her what you said. What she couldn't see, and I didn't. Don't worry about getting anything more piled onto your tab, Ranma."

"You're gonna try to pull Nabiki and profit apart? Better you than me," he said dubiously. "But thanks for the thought, at least."

-----------------------

The moon was hanging low in the sky, low enough now that she could see it perfectly as she lay on her bedroll. For hours she had watched, sleepless, as the night sky visible through her second-floor window grew gradually brighter. Now, with the pale autumnal moon shining full upon her, Shampoo conceded that she just wasn't going to get any slumber tonight. There was far too much on her mind.

She glanced away from the window for a moment, gaze tracking to an empty square of flooring. In times past that place had held her great-grandmother's bedroll. When they first settled down to run this restaurant that had simply been how Cologne had decided things would be, that the two of them would share sleeping quarters. Shampoo had grumbled once that this would keep her airen from paying her any nocturnal visits, but that had been nothing more than pro forma bluster and wishful thinking. In all honesty, it had been comforting to have a solid piece of her old, familiar life so close at hand in such a strange place.

She was sure the Matriarch had known that. Earlier this week, when Shampoo had seriously asked Cologne to let her have the room all to herself, her great-grandmother had agreed without demur. Shampoo had received the faint impression that Cologne thought she was being too optimistic, but she didn't care. Even if what she hoped for was still a long ways off, even if there was no real chance yet that Ranma would drop by for a late-night get-together, simply making the gesture had bolstered her spirits. She was finally making real, significant progress, Shampoo was certain of it—and surely if Cologne disagreed she would have said something when Shampoo told her why she wanted her own room now.

The Amazon sighed, still staring at the vacant stretch of floor. She didn't regret her decision, but perhaps she had made it a bit early. She'd spent awhile tonight talking with Cologne, discussing the ramifications of this latest twist in her beloved's life. True to her word Cologne hadn't shared anything personal about Nodoka Saotome, telling her again that these were things Shampoo ought to learn first from Ranma, and later on directly from Nodoka herself. In the end, Shampoo had found herself coming out of the discussion with more questions than she'd had going in... which, ultimately, hadn't surprised her much.

Still, even if Cologne wasn't going to dole out any easy answers, it would have been comforting to have her nearby tonight. Comforting to be reminded that someone so much wiser, more experienced, and more skilled than her was right there, working toward more or less the same things that Shampoo herself wanted so dearly. Here and now, wide awake in the small hours of the morning, Shampoo found herself wishing she'd put off her request for at least one more week. The room felt awfully empty at two A.M. with just herself in it, and only in her wildest dreams would Ranma drop in for some fun on the very night after meeting his mother again for real.

She rolled back onto her back and stared out the window again, just in time to see Ranma's upside-down head appear outside it.

Shampoo blinked, but surprise melted quickly into a wide, sultry, satisfied smile. _' Guess I fell asleep somewhere after all. '_

She rolled once more, this time coming around and up on her hands and knees. She waited just for a moment, wondering whether this would be one of the dreams where he made the first move. After two seconds passed without Ranma entering the room and separating her from her nightshift, Shampoo slid out of the garment and began slinking toward the window, maintaining eye contact with her increasingly wide-eyed beloved the whole time.

When she stood up to open the window, his precarious hold finally failed. Ranma dropped out of sight, landing with a crash loud enough to clue Shampoo in that this was no dream.

The impact might have shocked her back to her senses, but it wasn't enough to do the same thing for him. He was still lying flat on his back, staring absently up, when she opened the window and peeked out. "Ranma, you okay?" she called, as loud as she dared. He twitched and stirred, but gave no further response. Deciding not to risk a louder call, the Amazon slipped out the window and dropped easily to land beside him. Ranma unfroze a little more at the sight, as Shampoo had taken the time to put on clothes again, and not just her nightshift but slippers and a pair of loose-fitting pants as well. "Come on, Airen. Street is no place to be lying down," she said, slipping her arms under his legs and back, lifting him and leaping up and through her window, then setting him gently down.

"W- What the heck was that?" Ranma demanded in a loud whisper once they were inside the room. A quick glance around had already informed him that Cologne was nowhere to be seen.

The Amazon blushed, only just visible in the moonlight. "Um... was mistake. When Shampoo see Ranma at window so late at night, thought it was dream."

"A dream, huh? You have those kinds of dreams about me often?" he asked without stopping to think whether that was a wise question, ego blindsiding common sense once again.

Shampoo gulped, and the blush became more visible. "Um... Mm-hm." She hesitated for a long moment, uncertain whether to proceed. Ranma had to have come here for something serious, surely related in some way to his mother's return to his life. She really ought to move the conversation in that direction, away from matters related to her recent mistake. She could practically hear her great-grandmother's dry voice urging her down the sensible path, as well as reminding her that now, when she was making real progress, it would be worse than ever to scare him away by coming on too strong.

However, all the good intentions in the world apparently weren't enough to keep the next words down. "You ever dream about Shampoo, Ranma?"

Her husband paled, to a degree more noticeable than Shampoo's blush had been. Sweat broke out in rivulets on his brow. "Um... I... er... ah..."

She let him stammer awhile longer, smiling wider and wider as she read the unmistakable 'yes' behind his discomfiture. Eventually, she let him off the hook. "Okay, okay, Shampoo take back question. Sorry about misunderstanding, Airen." She gave a quick bow of her head, then continued, "You come here for something important, yes? What you need say to Shampoo?"

A few deep breaths gave him time to recover most of his composure. Ranma pushed recent memories to the back of his mind, and replied, "Something happened back at the Tendo place today while we were over here training. Something big, something unexpected, something I really wasn't ready for." He paused for a moment, grimacing once again at the memory. The middle Tendo might have had her reasons, and the reunion with Nodoka might have gone well so far, but he was nowhere near ready to simply forgive and forget how Nabiki had taken the choice away from him. "You remember what I told you about my mom, right? How she's been waiting for me an' Pop to come back to her, and I was finally seeing some light at the end of that tunnel? That once I got a few more of my problems solved, I could finally look her up again? Well, Nabiki decided to hurry the timetable a little. She brought Mom back and had her waiting for me when I got done flying and came back for dinner." He paused, finally noticing that Shampoo's reaction seemed off. The Amazon didn't seem shocked or even surprised, only puzzled. "Uh, why're you looking at me like that?"

"Did silly ex-panda not tell you?" Shampoo replied. "Shampoo already know you mother come back today... um, yesterday. Genma come running in to restaurant, beg us for anything we have keep him from turn into panda in front of her." She snorted. "Great-Grandmother give him his share of Nannichuan, which she not even tell Shampoo had arrive earlier."

Ranma gaped feebly back at her. "What...? You mean... Pop came by here? That's why he was so much later than Mr. Tendo in getting back?" His voice climbing quickly higher, he asked, "That idiot _already got cured?_"

"He not even bother to tell you, huh?" Shampoo asked sympathetically.

"NO!" She quickly made a shushing sound and put one finger over his lips, which knocked the worst immediacy of his outrage away. Ranma continued in a much quieter, but no less intense voice. "Mr. Tendo came back a couple hours before he did, said hello to Mom an' told her my old man would be awhile longer, that he might not even get back tonight." He snorted. "You wanna hear the story he told her, Shampoo? It's good for a laugh at least."

"Sure, what is it?"

"He told Mom that Pop was out walking through the back alleys, servin' as a decoy for any punks who'd try to mug innocent people. When an' if anyone tried, the old man would beat the snot out of them so they'd know better than to do it again." Ranma rolled his eyes. "I can't believe she bought a corny story like that."

Shampoo giggled. "Well, is only natural for woman to believe best of man she love."

"Um... yeah," he said. "Anyway, by the time Pop finally got back, it was late. Later than we usually go to bed, actually. And then of course there was all the talking we all did." He brooded for a moment. "Old man better not try wakin' me up at the crack of dawn tomorrow for a sparring session."

The Amazon stared blankly back at him. "You mean... mother not stay the night?"

It was his turn for a blank stare. "No, she did; Mom's back with us for good, now. She and Pop are in what was his and my room. Where'd you get that idea?"

She rolled her eyes. "Let Shampoo just say is not likely he getting you up at crack of dawn for spar." Honestly, her beloved really needed to let his wife educate him in certain matters.

"Yeah, I guess," he said, agreeing more because Shampoo seemed so certain than because he understood why she did.

Meanwhile, a thought had struck the Amazon. "So, Genma stay in same room, mother with him, and Ranma not there. Where Ranma sleep?" she asked, ever so casually.

"Don't worry," Ranma returned with a smirk, "I'm camping out in the dojo for tonight." He was mildly proud of himself—this time he'd not only recognized that what she'd said was only the surface of what she really meant, he'd even divined the real question behind the spoken one. "It was pretty funny to watch that discussion, too; Mr. Tendo was all for me movin' into Akane's room, but Pop couldn't decide whether to shout out his agreement or pretend to be all virtuous and stuff, so he just kept quiet." The tortured, indecisive look on his father's face had been the funniest sight he'd seen in days.

"And Ranma put his foot down hard, tell them no way, he not do that? Aiyah! So glad to hear it!" Shampoo bubbled.

"Well, I would've." Maybe his track record of standing up for himself against Soun wasn't so great, but he wasn't about to let him or anyone pull something like that right in front of his mother's eyes! "But Akane kinda beat me to it. Made darn sure everybody knew that wasn't gonna fly with her." Ranma gave a wry grimace. At least the tomboy had held back from making the kind of pervert remarks he'd heard many times in the past. Doubtless that was more for his mother's sake than his. "So, like I said, I'm in the dojo tonight. Tomorrow we're gonna clean out a small storage room so I can bunk there."

Silence fell, and stretched for awhile. Shampoo was still trying, and failing, to come up with a good "You could always sneak over here to sleep, you know" remark that couldn't also be construed as pushing too hard, when he spoke again. "I still can't believe my idiotic old man didn't bother to let me know he kicked the panda habit." Although in Genma's defense, there hadn't been much chance for him to get a private moment with his son yet. Ranma frowned thoughtfully. "So why exactly was he gone so long? It was hours between when Mr. Tendo came back and when Pop did. It shouldn't've taken but a minute to splash him down with the Nannichuan, right?" Before Shampoo could answer, he gave a sudden grin. "Please tell me you made him wash dishes all that time to pay for it."

She snickered. "No, but Shampoo wish we could have." Turning serious, she said, "Took a little longer than that for use Nannichuan, Airen. Great-Grandmother need to take... um, precautions that you and I not have to, because Jusenkyo not fight against change one curse for other. But for sure it no like using own power against it. So far away from cursed springs is not too hard force them to let go, but Great-Grandmother still have to set up magic defenses before she could use water for cure him."

Ranma blinked. "I never knew that. So she's gonna have to do that for Ryoga too, huh?"

"Is right." Shampoo grinned. "You think we should make him wash dishes few hours for payment?"

"Well, I had you get the water to cure him so I could settle the last of the debt I owe him. So I don't think I can ask you to do that." Ranma grinned back at her. "I'll leave the decision up to you." Shampoo laughed merrily at that. He chuckled as well, but then thought to ask, "Wait, though... if you actually had to go to _more_ trouble to cure Pop than I was thinking, how does that mean you couldn't have made him wash dishes as payback? ...Oh, right. Duh. You're just doing deliveries now; there aren't any dishes for him to wash."

"Is true, but that not reason we could not make him work to pay back," Shampoo explained. "Is because Great-Grandmother have him do something else rest of time. She sit down and talk with him about mother, help him remember everything about her before go back to her tonight, and also let Great-Grandmother know about who Nodoka Saotome is."

He mulled over that response, unsure how to take it. "Huh. So that prob'ly means you know more about my mother now than I do."

"No. I not get to listen to that talking," Shampoo returned. Deciding that the situation warranted use of one of the few pieces of slang she knew, she said, "And Great-Grandmother not tell me jack spit about her afterward."

Ranma choked back a chuckle at the unwitting slip, picturing Shampoo in a blonde wig and Sailor Venus outfit.

Not noticing any of this, she continued, "She say is best Shampoo learn these things from you. So... you already know I not getting any sleep tonight, Ranma. I guessing is same thing for you. As much time as you willing to take, stay and talk to me about her, Shampoo happy to listen."

"...Yeah. Yeah, I think that might be good, to talk about this," he said slowly. "At least for awhile. You're definitely right about the 'not getting any sleep' part."

"Lot to think about, huh?" she said sympathetically. "I will take as much off you mind as you can give."

"Thanks, Shampoo." Ranma heaved a long sigh. "It ain't even like anything went badly. It was great seeing her again, for real I mean. And I know she was really happy to see me. She even told me she was proud of me, that from everything she's seen an' heard so far she couldn't be happier about who her son turned out to be." By the end of the sentence he was wearing a small smile. "Which is great and all. I really am happy about that. And I'm definitely happy that we got no more chance of Pop getting busted by Jusenkyo and hurting her that way." Fear of that was what had given him the courage to brave the dangers of Shampoo's bedroom at two in the morning. Well, the journey might have started out a little more perilous than he was looking for, but Ranma found himself glad he'd come. "It's just... so much, all at once. It's really hard to wrap my head around all of it."

"Shampoo know the feeling," the Amazon returned quietly. "Like I say already, Great-Grandmother not tell me anything about who you mother is, Airen. But we do talk for while tonight about how things change, about how big of impact this have on you life. She also walk back with me over things I already know, things you have already tell me about Nodoka, help me see in ways I not have before. For sure is not such big thing tonight for me as you. But Shampoo can get idea of how you feeling."

"Heh. I guess we both could use a little time to let things settle down," Ranma said. A thought struck him. "You sure you want me piling anything else on you right now?"

"Yes," Shampoo declared wholeheartedly. "If it make Ranma feel better to tell, it make me feel better to hear. Even if it make own head spin a little more, that still will not equal the happiness of have you share with me."

"If you're sure... I don't really know where to start, though," he mused.

"Could tell me what you tell her of life so far," Shampoo suggested. "Did you show her you curse?"

"Yeah," Ranma answered. "Real early on. I wanted to get it out of the way."

"And she take it well?" Shampoo guessed, basing this on what he'd said earlier and the expression on his face now.

"She really did," he confirmed, smiling with remembered relief. "She was plenty surprised by it at first, of course, but she listened real close to me when I told her everything about it, how cool it was to be able to fly, to do what everybody's dreamed of for so long and almost nobody's ever been able to reach. That was enough for Mom. She's almost as happy for me to have this curse as I am." He smirked at her. "I didn't even have to mention how turning into a falcon gave me enough of an edge with some training to spank every Amazon's record in three thousand years of history."

Once again, all the good intentions in the world couldn't have held Shampoo's tongue. "So Ranma saying he want to spank Amazons?" she murmured, leaning toward him with a sultry, smoky look. She couldn't hold it long, though, dissolving into giggles as quickly as his own overconfidence evaporated.

"Uh, yeah, well, anyway. I think that could even have been the turning point for her deciding Pop had kept his promise to her, to bring me up as a man among men. That's—"

"Aiyah! Is true?" Shampoo broke in, unable to wait any longer for the most important part. "She say promise fulfilled, no more worry about kill self if she not see for true how good man you is?"

"Looks that way," Ranma said, smiling widely. "Well, she didn't come right out and say nothin' about the seppuku oath, and Pop didn't have the guts to bring it up, but she told him flat out that he'd done a good job, that from everything she'd seen so far she was real happy with how great I'd turned out. And she made it real clear that my Falcon curse was part of what she meant when she said that."

"Is about time," Shampoo pronounced in unmistakably satisfied tones. "About time somebody else glad for Ranma sake what Shampoo do for you, rather than just angry at me."

Ranma opted not to mention just yet that Nodoka didn't, couldn't know that it had been Shampoo's gift to him. "Yeah, Mom's reaction to finding out about my Falcon curse was every bit as good as everybody's else at the dojo should've been." He made a sound midway between a snort and a chuckle. "Shouldn't complain about that, I guess, since all the rest of them put together don't matter as much as she does."

"I really glad to hear that, Ranma," Shampoo said softly. _'In more way than one.'_

"An' I'm really glad I could say it to you," he replied. "I know I already told you how much I like this curse, said thanks and all that, but I don't think it's ever gonna be enough. I'm real grateful for all you did for me, Shampoo. Thanks to you, I was finally able to get back to my mom for real. I do mean that—thank you."

"Sh- Shampoo happy to help," the lavender-haired girl replied, speaking with some difficulty through the lump in her throat, and quickly blinking incipient tears out of her eyes.

Her back was to the window so the moonlight left her face in shadow, which meant Ranma didn't notice. "Still don't know whether to say 'Thank you' or 'Screw you' to Nabiki, though," he continued in a rather less pleasant tone of voice.

"Nabiki?... Oh, yeah, you say she is one what responsible for getting mother there now?" Shampoo asked. "Why she do that?"

"According to one of her friends, it's cause her own mother's gone and that made her hate it that mine was still around and I wasn't running right back to her." Ranma glowered. "Maybe I can understand that, but it don't make it any less stupid how that made her ignore everything else."

"Like what? Other than Ranma right to make own choices, of course." Shampoo shrugged. "Is not like any Tendo ever not ignore that."

For a moment Ranma hesitated on the verge of pointing out that her own track record in that arena was hardly perfect. But he swallowed the words; Shampoo might have slipped up there from time to time, but she had also come through for him big-time on a few occasions—particularly when she stood with him against Cologne all throughout the business of the Phoenix Pill. "That's part of it, yeah," he said instead. "But I was thinking even more about the stuff I didn't get around to telling Mom tonight, stuff that she's bound to find out before long." He sighed. "I wanted to wrap up more of the problems in my life before I went back to her, you know?"

"Yes, you already tell Shampoo that," she replied, a faint note of hesitation in her voice.

Ranma didn't hear it. "Sure, she's proud of me now, but what's she gonna think after some time has gone by and she sees some of the stuff that ain't so great? Promise or no promise, I never want her changing her mind about being happy to have me for a son. I don't want her getting even a little disappointed, Shampoo. She's waited so long to see me again, and she deserves better than that. But thanks to Nabiki, I—"

"Ranma, wait. Is something I need tell you," Shampoo interjected, mind made up.

"Huh? What's that?"

"Is about what you say now. That you would rather clean up every single problem in life and be perfect when you go back to mother. Yes?"

"Well, yeah, that wasn't what I said and it wasn't what I was planning, but I'd call that the best-case scenario. Why'd you ask?"

"Is because of something Great-Grandmother say to me tonight, in talk Shampoo tell you we have." Shampoo stared at him, the intensity of her regard not hidden by the darkness. "You say it own self, how long it has been that mother not have you in her life. Not have own child to hold, to love, to give things for, to be mother for! Shampoo understand you never ever want disappoint her, but if you go back to her perfect, no problems in life, is maybe you do just that. If you perfect, if you life is already perfect, what you need her for?"

The words felt almost like a punch to his gut. Ranma gasped, then gaped for a while. Finding his voice at last, he said, "But... is that... are you...?"

"Think about it, Airen," she urged, taking more care than usual with her words. "How much of you life she has had to miss out on. Now she have you with her again, you in her life and she in yours. You think maybe she would be happy to see there is still some ways she can help you grow?"

"I... I never thought about it like that," he admitted. "You really think that's how it is, Shampoo?"

His words were so plaintive that Shampoo had to really struggle to get out her reply. "Ummm... maybe."

Ranma blinked. "Wait a minute... whaddaya mean, 'maybe'?"

"Mean just what say." Shampoo sighed. "This was something Great-Grandmother bring up to Shampoo, tell me to think about. But she do it in such a way that there no way for me to know whether she mean 'this is how it is' or 'this sound good but is not really truth at all'. So... sorry, Airen, not want to make you own burden of thoughts heavier, but I think I need to pass this on to you."

He heaved his own sigh, a loud, exasperated one. "You know, it's one thing for the old ghoul not to give me any easy answers. But she oughta cut you a lot more slack than I think she does, Shampoo."

"I tell her this once, early in Japan. She say, 'Spoil children is job of grandmother. Not great-grandmother.'"

Ranma snorted. "Can't argue about that... cause if I did, she'd smack me over the head with her stick." Shampoo nodded. "Well, I ain't gonna say that I really wanted more deep, heavy questions to think about, but it's better to see them than have them hit me from behind. Thanks, Shampoo," he said unenthusiastically.

"Is anything more I can do to help?" Shampoo thought back over those words, and realized they hadn't been chosen quite as well as they could have been. "Anything to help you feel better now?"

"I dunno about right now," he replied after a long, thoughtful pause. "Let's just get back to me telling you the general stuff, so you know pretty much everything that's going on. Maybe getting all that off my chest will help, and anyway if you know more maybe it'll help clear up whatever other mysteries your granny stuck you with." He thought for a few moments more about what would be the best way to do that. "You got a pencil and paper in here?"

"Mm-hm," she affirmed, rising and fetching them from the desk along one wall. Ranma took them and sat down at the desk, quickly filling up two sheets of paper with a near word-for-word transcription of the note Nabiki had left for him with Junko. The girl's exhortation to give his utmost in learning every nuance of Nabiki's preparation had really hit home with him, and Ranma had utterly memorized the note's contents before destroying it per Junko's instructions and heading inside. The middle Tendo had been able to squeeze everything onto one sheet of paper, but Ranma didn't even try. He finished his task and handed the papers to Shampoo.

"Ranma, I no can read this," the Amazon said flatly.

He blinked. "Well, duh. Maybe it would help if one of us turned on the light?"

Dark or not, he didn't miss her eye-rolling response. "If moonlight not enough, how you write it in first place? I talking about you handwriting, Airen." She shook her head, then said, "Why write down anyway? If this something you not want language barrier to get between us, want to make sure Shampoo understand, why we not just change into cursed forms and talk free?"

_'Translation: you already got to see me naked tonight, it's only fair I get my turn too.'_ "That ain't it, Shampoo. I wrote this down so you'll have it to keep and memorize. Plus that's how Nabiki gave it to me, and I'm sure I couldn't do as good a job as her of phrasing everything to get the point across just right."

"Nabiki? What you talking?"

"I told you already, she's the reason Mom is back with Pop and me for good. Before she brought her back to the dojo, she met with her and told her some stuff about me. She also came up with this," he gestured to the papers, "which is basically a bunch of stuff about my life, most of which is mostly true and a little that's off the wall completely. It all locks together to make a story Mom'll be glad to hear, and which will keep her from ever finding out who 'Ranko' and 'Mr. Panda' were."

"Not sure I happy to hear Nabiki go to this much trouble, take this much on herself," Shampoo said darkly.

"Join the club," Ranma suggested. "Getting the choice made for me grates like hell. I just hope Mom won't get hurt by being called back too early, an' that it'll all work out for the best in the end."

"Me too." The Amazon took the papers from him and began scrutinizing them, barely managing to make out one character in thirty. "So what this say about me? Where is Shampoo's part in Nabiki's story?"

"That's one of the 'pretty close to the truth' parts. According to her, I fought you in my normal form, but I didn't stick around long enough to find out about the marriage laws after I won." He hesitated, then added, "She also suggested we give Mom some time to settle down before springing you or Ucchan on her." Actually, Nabiki had flat-out commanded Ranma to give his mother time to adjust before even informing the other girls about her return to his life, which was the one area he'd edited on the transcript he'd written for Shampoo.

" Oh she did, did she, " Shampoo muttered under her breath, not bothering with Japanese just then. The fact that Nabiki was probably right about that only made it stick worse in her craw. She glowered darkly for a few moments, then pushed past the worst of the irritation and said, "Well, if this is roles we all have to play for Ranma, Shampoo suppose is best to learn the lines. You tell me what this say, and I write it down."

"Okay, but destroy it after you got it memorized and until then keep it safe. Don't let it blow out the window or nothing. With my luck it'd wind up right in Mom's hands somehow."

"No worry, Ranma, I know that even without you have to say." She gave a forced laugh. "Shampoo think is official now—both of us been in this crazy place way too long."

-----------------------

She'd had a little over thirty-six hours to think about things. The first and easiest conclusion Shampoo had reached was that she'd need lots more time to settle everything within her mind, not to mention more talks with Ranma. The hour they'd shared so early the previous day had only been a start. It had been a good start, certainly; he'd helped her understand much more of what was going on with the Saotomes, and she'd succeeded in lightening his own load of care. The Amazon hoped she'd get a chance for a repeat performance soon.

Of course, even a dozen more conversations like their last one wouldn't accomplish everything that was needed. Sooner or later she'd have to speak with Nodoka face-to-face. Towards the end of their hour, when she'd gotten around to asking Ranma how soon he thought that meeting could happen, her husband hadn't been able to say yet. Just for that one moment, Shampoo had done her utmost to push aside the fluttery feelings of warmth and love that he evoked in her—the ones that made her all too eager to believe the absolute best where he was concerned—and really see his response for what it was. As far as she could tell, the only reluctance he'd shown had been for the short-term, the same reality that she'd already grudgingly acknowledged. If she raced forward now to meet and ingratiate herself with Nodoka as fast as she could, it would only make a complicated situation even more confusing. She knew it, he knew it, and as far as Shampoo could tell that was the only driving force behind his uncertainty as to when his mother should meet his wife.

And it would certainly be in all their best interests if he had at least a little time to spend getting to know Nodoka and relaying important information to Shampoo before that meeting took place. She knew that and she accepted it. That didn't mean she was happy about him having to cancel their training session for today, though. When he had told her she'd just sighed and nodded in agreement, but now that Friday afternoon had come, with the students straggling away from Furinkan and only a half-hour remaining until she _would_ have been meeting him again for the afternoon, it was much harder to grin and bear it.

In fact, she wasn't even trying. Perhaps the heroic thing to do would be to focus on the fact that her beloved was spending time with his mother and simply be happy for him, but she wasn't going to take such a high road. On the other hand, Shampoo wasn't about to work out her frustration and anger on Ranma, not when he hadn't done anything to deserve it. Today's disappointment was due to circumstances beyond either of their control.

Today's target was the person for whom that wasn't true.

She had trailed her quarry for the last ten minutes, ghosting across the rooftops with all the stealth she possessed, watching and waiting for the perfect moment. This was the first time she'd deliberately followed Nabiki on her way home from Furinkan. Somehow Shampoo hadn't been surprised that the middle Tendo's route was quite different from the simple, straightforward one taken by Ranma or Akane. Nabiki's path so far had gone well out of her way, twisting and winding through many different streets and neighborhoods. Interestingly, and frustratingly, and probably not coincidentally, the twisting nature of this path had kept her in wide-open, well-traveled areas the whole time. There was never a moment without several other pedestrians nearby, even discounting the mercenary's two closest underlings who kept pace with her.

Shampoo brooded over this for a few minutes, while keeping one eye on the group's progress. She might not have lived here as long as Nabiki had, but her delivery duties had enabled her to learn the streets at least as well as the other girl. If the greedy money-grubbing witch was deliberately choosing this route to get back home without ever leaving the main flow of traffic, then she ought to take a left turn... _here_. Shampoo allowed herself a tiny, grim smile as Nabiki did just that. When she successfully predicted the trio's next two turns as well, the smile grew larger—and Shampoo bounded away over the rooftops as fast as she could go.

Fifteen minutes later, she stared down at Nabiki, Manami, and Junko once more, panting quietly from exertion but fiercely satisfied. Nabiki hadn't yet begun to show any signs of concern, but that meant nothing; she probably spent hours schooling herself not to reveal what she was really thinking. The girl on her right was similarly impassive. However, the remaining member of the group was clearly beginning to get a little nervous. They were currently walking down a main thoroughfare of this section of Nerima, and at this time of day there should have been a steady flow of people. However, the three of them were the only ones walking between the long, blank property walls, and had been for several minutes now. What the one girl was showing, Shampoo was quite confident the other two were feeling.

She waited, the sadistic side of her hoping that she could afford to let them continue for another few minutes. That would be just enough time for them to go around a curve and see the blockade she'd formed in the street ahead of them, the reason why they'd met nobody coming the other way for some time now. That would be the perfect moment to drop in on them, in Shampoo's opinion.

Unfortunately, it was not to be. As if she could hear the thought, or at least possessed a better danger-sense than her younger sibling, Nabiki suddenly came to a halt. "I think we should head back and—" the middle Tendo started to say.

Shampoo was already moving, no longer bothering with stealth as she dropped through the air. She touched down a few feet away from Nabiki, blocking the retreat that the other girl had meant to make. Not that it would have done her any good; Shampoo had placed more than one blockade. "Nihao," she purred.

Two of the girls in front of her froze, their faces masks as rigid and unyielding as their bodies. One girl, though, was made of sterner—or at least different—stuff. "Shampoo, don't do this! I know you're angry, but—"

"You shut up!" the Amazon snarled, turning away from Nabiki. "Shampoo know what you is!" Five rapid strides took her across the distance separating her from Junko, and then Shampoo's hand lashed out with all the speed and precision of the Xi Fang Gao. This time, though, her target was a shiatsu point in the throat, not the scalp. Junko stumbled backward, wide-eyed, fearful, and clutching at her throat, unhurt but unable to utter even the slightest of sounds.

"Manami, no!" Nabiki's barked command had the Amazon spinning away from Junko to confront the other two. Manami was staring at her superior in shocked incomprehension, but the response hadn't stopped her. Nor had it affected her aim as far as Shampoo could tell; the water from Manami's pistol impacted her right in the center of her torso.

Other than getting her wet, it had no effect at all. It was with great satisfaction that Shampoo saw a flicker of true, unguarded emotion cross Nabiki's face. "For something important as this, Shampoo use waterproof soap," the Amazon sneered.

"I can't imagine why," Nabiki murmured, cool mask firmly in place once more. "It's not like you couldn't shred the three of us even in your other body."

"That not why I here. Not this time, anyway," Shampoo ground out. "This time just for talking." Turning away from Nabiki to glare at Junko, she amended, "Talking just Nabiki and me. You not say nothing for four hours now. And you," shifting her glare to Manami, "keep out of it or you get same!"

"If you're quite through threatening my friends," Nabiki drawled, "perhaps you could tell me what you wanted?"

"And here Shampoo thought you smart enough to figure out on you own," the Amazon spat. "Okay, I make it really plain. Stop try to control Ranma. He not yours, not stupid Akane's, not any Tendo! Is not right _anybody_ but Ranma put him and mother back together!" She paused, frowning, then admitted, "Or Genma could have. If Ranma say is okay. But not you, not nobody else!"

"So Ranma already came by and told you about that, did he?" Nabiki inquired, still speaking as if she had no care in the world beyond curiosity.

The pose infuriated Shampoo, made her all the more determined to defeat this opponent even on what was decidedly not her best ground. "What you talking?" she shot back, putting as much contempt in her voice as she could manage. "You not already find out Genma come by, tell us whole story, beg for water for his cure? Maybe Nabiki just lucky all this time, not good."

"I'm not so sure _you _ought to be casting aspersions on _my_ powers of deduction," Nabiki replied. "Did you ever stop and think that I might have had a very good reason for acting now, rather than sitting back and letting everything keep dragging on?"

"Sure," Shampoo said with an unpleasant laugh. "You think this give you stronger hold on Ranma, make him more in debt to you than money ever do. You no care how it feel for him, just debt of honor you think you can chain him down. Is all of it? Shampoo know that part of it at least, but she not so good as Nabiki at thinking like snake crawling through underground maze to get at baby rabbit. If there more, and it not even worse, go ahead and tell me."

"That was certainly an... imaginative little description," Nabiki said. "But then, anyone who made her plan of action believing that she got the whole, complete truth from Genma Saotome... well, imagination is certainly not something she's missing out on."

"Great-Grandmother got whole story," Shampoo said as flatly as a yen piece that had been run over by a steamroller. "Let me tell you, Shampoo imagination is not part of picture here."

"Well, unless the old woman sent you, maybe you should head back to her now?" the middle Tendo suggested. "I haven't had many dealings with her, but they were enough to tell me I didn't want to get on her bad side. And I think Jusenkyo proves that she doesn't cut a lot of slack for someone just because she's family."

"If Great-Grandmother punish me for this, I will listen her tell me why I was wrong and not make mistake again!" Shampoo declared. "But I no think she will. Defend loved ones from evil what would stab them in back is Amazon way."

"And what about other threats, hm? What about something that wouldn't sneak up behind him, but come down on him from directly in front and kill him without him even putting up a fight?" Nabiki returned. "You want to complain about me picking when and how he went back to his mother, Shampoo? You think I should have just let it slide as long as he planned to? Please. You martial artists are all the same. If you want something, then you decide that's reason enough to believe everything's going to work out just like that. You don't bother to come up with more than the briefest little short-term, half-assed plans to get what you want, and mostly you just wait and yell for it to drop into your lap."

Shampoo could certainly have countered that accusation effectively enough, but although Nabiki's words had stoked her temper higher she was nowhere near furious enough to blurt out just how much planning, effort, and time had gone into her quest for her beloved over the last few months. "If you trying to say something, try harder. I is just poor simple martial artist, after all," Shampoo said sarcastically. "I could squash whole Tendo _family_ one hand, but is too too hard to try and figure out what so smart girl Nabiki saying."

"Then I'll make it clear," Nabiki snapped. "Since you say you got the whole story from Genma, then you know about the promise he made to her about Ranma. If she didn't decide he was a 'man among men', the two of them would be in the backyard spilling their guts in the name of honor, duty, and motherly love. Now you tell me, Shampoo—what's the absolute best defense we could possibly have, against something like that? What's the one resource we've got available that could assure us Nodoka wouldn't make that decision, even if it looked like she was starting to lean that way?"

It galled the Amazon quite a lot to answer, in all honesty, "I still not know what you trying to say."

Nabiki rolled her eyes. "What a surprise." Her gaze sharpening, she glared back at Shampoo and continued, "I'm talking about _you_, Miss Kitty-Hawk. You and that trick you pulled on my sister so long ago. The Xi Fang Gao is all the insurance Ranma and his dad could ask for, that his mom won't be calling their little debt due."

Shampoo was silent for quite awhile, letting her bitter, angry glare be her only reply while she turned all this over and over in her mind. She could smash through any wall in Nerima with a single blow, but Nabiki's words felt like a twisting maze of barriers that she couldn't bull through by any strength she possessed. And as for finding a way between them...? Gritting her teeth and redoubling her efforts, wishing once again that the Japanese hadn't made their language so damnably, unnecessarily complicated, she finally found her point of attack. "Not good enough, Nabiki," she growled dangerously. "That not say anything why you do this now, instead of wait for Ranma own time."

The middle Tendo shrugged, and even offered her a faint, mocking smile. "I thought I'd spare you that part of it, but since you insist... Shampoo, from where I'm standing I don't see any reason to be sure you'll be around that much longer. Not four months or however long it would have been. Not even one."

Shampoo made a wordless noise of disgust. "Shampoo never abandon Airen. You not stupid enough to think that."

"Abandon him? Of course not." The smile was gone now, but the mocking look had only grown stronger. "No matter that Daddy and Mr. Saotome are pushing him harder than ever to concentrate on one particular fiancée and settle things with everyone else. No matter how surprised he was, or how thoughtful he looked just last week, when Mr. Saotome pointed out that once he and Ryoga secured their cures, there'd really be nothing left for him to get from you. Ranma's already scored something even _better_ than a cure to his curse. What's left? Free food, sure, but he can get that for a lot less trouble elsewhere. High-powered techniques, but the same thing goes there, and yours certainly aren't 'no strings attached' now are they?"

Nabiki paused, staring coolly across the intervening space, apparently without the slightest concern for the cauldron of boiling, turbulent emotions she was stirring in Shampoo. "I suppose he might still find you helpful for some of the bigger challenges that crop up from time to time, but our boy Saotome is getting stronger every day. There can't be much water left in even that well, and I don't know whether they care about it anyway. From what Mr. Saotome said, he thinks you people finally shifted from 'somewhat useful resource' to 'potentially threatening nuisance'. And if Ranma didn't think so, he sure didn't know what to say back to put his father in his place."

"That... that is lie..." Shampoo snarled through gritted teeth, her hands clenched tightly into fists and her whole body trembling with the effort needed to restrain herself. "Shampoo see own eyes how hard Ranma take it, how sad and confuse he is when Spatula Girl tell him Amazons worthless and he need throw me away. He not hide that, he not hide relief when I tell him truth and make him see how wrong she is!"

"Oh, so you did give him reason to keep you around a little longer? All right, I stand corrected," Nabiki said airily. "But here's ten thousand yen's worth of free advice, Shampoo... Maybe you should think back over the times you two have spent together, and how much of that was simply him taking what you were oh so happy to give."

"Enough."

Shampoo barely even heard the word, certainly didn't react to it immediately. Not until Nabiki broke eye contact, her head whipping to the side to stare at some new target, did the Amazon push away the worst of her turmoil and shift her own gaze.

About five feet away, Cologne rested atop her staff. Manami and Junko were nowhere to be seen.

Shampoo clamped her mouth shut, feeling a rush of uncertainty. She had no idea how to respond now. On the one hand, she didn't want to depend on her great-grandmother to fight her battles for her—and now, with the worst of the boiling rage gone, she could see several flaws in Nabiki's insinuations. She was ready, willing, and eager to return to the attack.

On the other hand, getting in Great-Grandmother's way when she wore _that_ look was very, very high on Shampoo's Bottom Ten List.

One quick hop put the Matriarch a few feet away from Nabiki, at an angle that left the middle Tendo focusing solely on her rather than Shampoo. "You have spent the last several minutes alternately twisting the truth for my great-granddaughter and lying to her outright," Cologne continued, her voice as cold as the wind that blows between the stars. "You may succeed in confusing her and giving her even more pain than her time in this land has, but she is the least of your concerns now."

"It sure does take a lot of Amazons to talk to one Japanese high-schooler," Nabiki observed.

To the naked eye, Cologne didn't respond at all to the remark. However, Shampoo had been honing a new sense lately, and with it she witnessed the barest fraction of the Matriarch's aura synchronize with the air and uncurl from around her body to envelop Nabiki. It moved oddly slowly to her perception, taking much more time than Shampoo knew her ancestor needed for anything she had yet shown her great-granddaughter.

With the energy wrapped invisibly around Nabiki, Cologne spoke again, her voice no warmer. "Unlike my great-granddaughter, I know exactly why you called in Nodoka Saotome. Congratulations, Miss Tendo—you have actually managed to inconvenience me. You have forced me to alter some of my plans." Nabiki's face still showed no emotion, but she was pale and trembling now. Despite the seething contempt she felt for the other girl, Shampoo shivered herself at the sight before her... then blinked, as her own lesser Air senses finally clued her in to something. The temperature was dropping rapidly in the air surrounding Nabiki, though the effect didn't extend far enough to reach either Amazon. A gentle breeze was circling around her, making the chill even worse. Nabiki's shivering and the pallor of her skin were physiological, not psychological, in origin.

"No more, Nabiki Tendo. It ends," Cologne proclaimed, somehow managing to chill her tone by a few degrees more as she stared Nabiki straight in the eyes. Squinting, Shampoo thought she could make out the beginning of ice crystals forming on the girl's eyelashes. "This is your last warning. If I learn of any more interference from you, I will destroy you."

Just as Shampoo thought that Nabiki's shuddering must drop the girl to the street, Cologne looked away, banishing whatever technique she'd employed. The air quickly began to warm up around Nabiki again. Shampoo watched just long enough to see the girl stagger over to the nearest wall and brace herself against it to avoid falling, then turned back to regard Cologne. "Come, Great-Granddaughter," the ancient Amazon commanded, bounding away to the very rooftop from which her descendent had descended.

Shampoo followed, landing from her own leap to find Cologne bouncing away again. Not until she had led her great-granddaughter five blocks away did the Matriarch stop, coming to rest with a perfect one-point landing and freezing Shampoo in her tracks with a single glance. "And now, Shampoo, please tell me what you thought you were going to accomplish through that little encounter," she said.

The Amazon gulped, knowing right away that this wasn't going to be much fun. At least the Matriarch hadn't spoken in Mandarin, which she used when the matter was truly dire and she wanted to be certain every last shred of her meaning and intent were clear. Taking a deep breath, she answered, "Sh- _I_ hurt for Ranma sake, hear from him how he hate not be one to go back to mother on his own. I not want that happen again. Ranma too too nice to treat stupid Nabiki like she deserve, but Shampoo not have that problem. I really just mean to do what Great-Grandmother do for me, tell her this her last chance stop pushing Airen around."

"And what do you think you actually accomplished?"

"Had not done so good about get that message out," Shampoo admitted. "Take too long, and let Nabiki do too much of talking." Then her jaw squared in determination as she continued, "Like Great-Grandmother say, she make me confuse and it hurt to hear what she say—but even if you not have be there, she would not have beat me. I was find the holes in what she say, I not let her trick me into not trust Ranma or think he just waiting until he have no more use for Shampoo. Each thing she say only build up more debt for her, more trouble if she not back down in the end."

Cologne sighed. "Well, I suppose that can be considered a victory of sorts. Now, another question—how much would you be willing to pay, to earn it? Would you say it was worth admitting to Nabiki that you and Son-in-law have been enjoying much closer contact lately than he's let the Tendos know?"

"Great-Grandmother, I not say that!" Shampoo protested. "Shampoo see it when she lay out trap for that, I slip past it by say it was Genma who tell us about mother come back!"

"Nicely overlooking the fact that when Genma came to our restaurant on Wednesday, he didn't know it was Nabiki who was responsible for his wife's return," Cologne said flatly.

"Um..." The monosyllable was all Shampoo could manage.

"Nor was that the only time you revealed things to her," the Matriarch continued remorselessly. "Almost every line she spoke was a trap, designed to hurt you and extract information, and do as much of both as possible. I am glad that you were able to resist the obvious half of her attack, Great-Granddaughter, but make no mistake—this was a loss for you and a victory for her."

"Until Great-Grandmother step in, anyway," Shampoo muttered. "Thank you for that, sorry you have to do."

Cologne shook her head. "I would have had this encounter with Miss Tendo regardless. Her actions, not yours, decided that. In fact, your attempt actually gave me a good opportunity to deliver my message."

It still stung to depend on someone else to clean up her own mess, Shampoo thought. "But even if you take away Nabiki victory, it still mean a loss for me. Great-Grandmother... what should I have do different?"

"You should not have confronted her at all," Cologne replied. "Not on a battleground like this. It was as grievous a mismatch as if Akane Tendo were to challenge you to a fight."

Shampoo couldn't suppress the wince that these words evoked. "Is, is really that bad?" she asked plaintively. It was hardly pleasant to be told she sucked that badly in a battle of wits.

"What do you think? You engaged her in a situation where she held every single advantage! The only weapons were words, in a language you're still not proficient with. You accused her of taking away decisions that were rightfully Ranma's, when you were doing much the same by forcing the confrontation without even asking him first. Even the things you knew that she didn't, things that you could use to defeat her arguments and accusations, would work in her favor rather than yours. Getting your enemy to reveal her secrets is a victory of high order, Great-Granddaughter!"

The lavender-haired girl heaved a deep and bitter sigh. "Shampoo know that," she said quietly. "Not mean to do, didn't even realize I had."

"It's understandable," Cologne said, her tone softening. "Consider the effort you have put into your training. Nabiki Tendo has put just as much into learning to manipulate those around her. _That_ is what you must understand, Great-Granddaughter; once you let yourself see it, you won't need me to tell you not to fight her on her own terms."

"You have try to tell me this before, right?" Shampoo asked melancholically. "Time we talk about her and those two girl who is closest to her, what they do."

"Yes. I suppose I wasn't clear enough, so I will state it now as plainly as I can. Nabiki Tendo is far and away the most dangerous enemy you have. She is ruthless in protecting what she values the most, and that is control. Nabiki will go to nearly any lengths to maintain control over her life and the elements that are important to it, such as Ranma." Cologne paused while Shampoo growled at the idea. When her great-granddaughter didn't say anything, she went on. "She might not yet be willing to arrange a death to get her way, but make no mistake—that's the path she's walking down. And as it is she certainly wouldn't hesitate to ruin her adversaries' lives."

"Almost sound like you say best thing Shampoo could do against her is arrange Nabiki's own death, make it look like accident," the Amazon said, doing her best to keep the uncertainty from bleeding into her voice. Her rational mind could conceive of the advantage of such a plan, but it caused a queasy, hollow sensation in the pit of her gut.

"No," Cologne replied gently. "You've never had to kill an opponent in open, honest combat, Shampoo. No-one should ever take her first life in such an unfair, deceitful way."

The lavender-haired girl blinked. _' Well, at least now I can stop being confused about not following through on Akane that time. '_ It was true that a random spout of water had stopped her before she reached the girl, bound and gagged and hidden away in a cave by Pantyhose Taro... but it was also true that if she had moved forward quickly and decisively, Akane would have been dead long before the fractured wall had loosed that blast of water. For a very long time now Shampoo had tried not to think back on that day, tired of not knowing whether she should be angry or relieved that she hadn't done what she'd set out to. It wasn't something she had been willing to tell Cologne in order to get her advice. _' For me to get her answer this way, without even having to admit to that... well, I guess today's seen some good luck as well as bad. '_

Aloud, she said, "So what you saying Shampoo should do about Nabiki?" She hesitated for a moment, wondering whether she should go into more detail, or just let Cologne say what she would. Almost as soon as the thought was formed, she recognized the answer. It hurt that she'd gotten herself into a mess that her great-grandmother had had to rescue her from, and though the temptation was there to transform all that pain into anger and contempt for Nabiki, that wouldn't ultimately be very productive. Better to take what responsibility she still could. Switching to Mandarin so Cologne would know how serious she was about this, Shampoo continued, " I would like to tell Ranma. To warn him about what kind of person she really is. But... but I don't think I can, yet. I believe he's trusting me more, now. But I don't think he trusts me enough yet to just believe something like that, especially when Nabiki hasn't ever done anything bad enough and direct enough for him to see. "

Cologne smiled for the first time since the conversation had begun. " Very well reasoned, Great-Granddaughter, " she encouraged. " You are correct. For all that he has experienced, Ranma is still too much of an innocent to understand Miss Tendo's true nature. Especially since the kind of harm she inflicts on him is so much more subtle than the kind he's used to seeing and fighting. If you simply sat down with him and told him everything about her, attempted to make him see her for who she really is, there really is no possible good outcome. "

Shampoo sighed. " So he wouldn't believe me. " She supposed that she shouldn't let it get her down. After all, it had taken two conversations for Cologne to get the full reality of the situation through her head, and Shampoo had no trouble at all admitting to being way out of her great-grandmother's league.

" Actually, I am fairly confident you could at least convince him that you believed what you were saying, " the Matriarch replied.

" H- huh? Then why...? " Equal parts elation and confusion robbed her of any more eloquence than that.

" Then why not do just that? " Cologne finished. " What do you think Ranma would do then? "

" If he believed me and didn't think I was just trying to yank him away from the Tendos before he's ready to go on his own, then he'd know better than to go along with any more of Nabiki's schemes! " Shampoo declared. " And if he just thought that I might be right, he'd try and find out for sure, and until then he'd be at least a little more wary of her! How can those not be good outcomes? "

The Matriarch opted not to answer with words. Instead, she pinned her youngest descendent with the dreaded Lecturer's Stare, the one that Shampoo knew meant she had been given enough information to work out the answer for herself... or at least, what Cologne considered enough information.

Kicking her mind up into as high a gear as she could manage and suffering through several moments of furious thought, she attempted, " Would he just make the same mistake I did? Face off with Nabiki on her ground, give her the chance to screw him over without even letting him know she was doing it? Ranma told me he's been trying to think about things more now, rather than just charging right ahead into something... but if he wanted to know what was really going on, he'd have to try _something_ to get more information. No matter how hard he tried to hide what he was really doing, I don't think he could fool her into thinking he wasn't really suspicious of her. And that would be all the hint she needed to twist things around for him even more. " There wasn't much point in telling him a truth if that act led inevitably to him being even more deceived, hurt, and confused, after all.

" Indeed, " Cologne pronounced. " And it goes even further than that, Great-Granddaughter. Your husband is not one to conceal his emotions, at least not the ones that he himself knows and admits to. Suppose we did manage to open his eyes in one fell swoop to the reality of Miss Tendo's darker side. Do you think he could hide his newfound aversion to her? Do you think he would even try? "

" Probably not, " Shampoo answered. " I don't think that's the kind of lie he'd bother to tell. And even if he did, he probably wouldn't fool anyone but himself. " She well remembered how transparent he'd been during that long-ago 'date' for the Instant Nannichuan. " But how does that take things any further? I already said I knew Nabiki would see through him. "

" I'm not talking about Nabiki now, at least not directly. I'm referring to his mother, " Cologne said dourly. " From what I heard you say to Miss Tendo, Ranma himself wasn't happy about her interfering to bring Nodoka back now, when things are still so uncertain. But from everything Genma said and the things you have passed along to me from Ranma, that is not how Mrs. Saotome feels at all. She will be immensely grateful to Nabiki for having brought her family back together, grateful enough to believe the best of her against almost any provocation. It doesn't matter how true our accusations might be—if we attempt to poison Ranma's mind against Nabiki, she could take the same tack with Nodoka against us. And as things stand now, she would certainly succeed. "

A long, tense moment of silence stretched over the rooftop. " But... if that's... then couldn't she do that anyway? " Shampoo eventually choked out, horror keeping any other emotions at bay for the moment.

" She certainly could, " Cologne answered. " The only thing that would keep her from doing that is the belief that we would simply counter with the Xi Fang Gao. I put considerable effort into instilling a fear and respect for that technique into Miss Tendo. But if she should ever think she has nothing left to lose, that's no longer a deterrent. "

Shampoo thanked all her lucky stars that she'd asked Ranma not to tell anyone about the rule against casual use of the technique. It was only a small glimmer of relief, though, against a great many shadows. " And... and even if she didn't do it herself, it could still happen, " she said slowly. " Because Ranma wouldn't lie to his mother if she asked who told him all this. He'd want us to back him up, and... " She hesitated, not wanting to finish the thought.

" And no matter how good I am, there are some things that I can't do. Not without resorting to techniques that cannot be used here, " Cologne said grimly. " Both of us have earned trust from Son-in-law, but the same is not true for his mother. Miss Tendo bought herself too great an advantage when she was the one to lead Nodoka Saotome back to her husband and son. Beyond a doubt, Nabiki believes that we would use the Xi Fang Gao to overcome that if she forces our hand, but that's because she wouldn't even wait that long if she were in our place. "

" So what are we going to do? " Shampoo asked. " How _can_ we beat something like that? "

" It will take time, " Cologne said with a sigh. " That was what I bought us by appearing so confident in front of Miss Tendo, and by unleashing such a threat. I'll keep a closer eye on her to be certain, but she should halt all activity for at least a little while, and when she does start up with the schemes again she'll focus on subtle, long-term, easily concealed or deniable ones. A strategy like that, we can handle. " She paused for emphasis, looked her great-granddaughter in the eyes, and said, " But as things are now, any sort of immediate confrontation would inevitably end in disaster. "

Shampoo closed her eyes, took a deep breath, then spat out a string of oaths so blistering that even the Matriarch, with three hundred years of experience, was impressed. " Why does this have to be so damned hard? " she demanded of Cologne, the universe, and everything. " I just want to be happy with Ranma! I know I can make him happy, I know I can give him what he really wants and needs! Even if I've made some mistakes, _he_ doesn't deserve this much struggle or trouble or heartache! "

The Matriarch nodded sympathetically, but said, " Life isn't about what we deserve, Great-Granddaughter. At least, not unless we make it so by our own efforts. "

" Guess not, " Shampoo said tightly, forcing down the tears that wanted to come. " If we had the Nanban Mirror and it was still in one piece, I'd go back in time and stop Nabiki from ever talking to Ranma's mother! I'd use the Xi Fang Gao and DAMN the rules against that! "

" In a scenario like that, you could go even further, " Cologne observed. " Just go back one more day, and then it could be you contacting her and leading her back to her son. It could be you gaining that incredible windfall of Saotome goodwill. "

" Not a chance, " Shampoo shot back, finding the backbone to nearly glare at the Matriarch. " I told Nabiki—that should have been for Ranma to do, or maybe his father. Not _anyone _else, and that's what I meant. "

" Then I'm glad to hear that, " Cologne said, summoning a larger smile than before. " You might have failed today in talking to Nabiki, Shampoo, but you just passed a very important test. "

" Wonderful, " Shampoo grumbled, dismissing the praise with an irate wave of the hand. " And that helps Ranma's problem how? It might have been a mistake, but I was doing this for him—a lot more than for me. "

" Then understand that the situation isn't as dark as I've been making it out to be, " the Matriarch replied. " We've been focusing on the negatives here. The positives are very real too. "

" What are they? " Upon receiving another dose of the Lecturer's Stare, Shampoo didn't even try to stifle her groan. " Great-Grandmother, my head hurts. And Ranma himself said that he thinks you ought to go a lot easier on me than you do. "

Cologne let out a cackle. " Then I'll do just that, but only since you stumbled over the answer without even realizing it. "

" Huh? "

" This battle isn't ultimately about Nabiki, Great-Granddaughter, " the ancient Amazon explained. " It is about Ranma himself—the warrior who couldn't learn some important lessons growing up on the road with just his father; the boy who's becoming a man. All you have to do is continue as you have been. Be honest with him about how you really feel, give him all the love and care and support you can. You can even drop a few subtle hints to him about Nabiki, " Cologne paused to fire off the most piercing stare she could manage, " if you're willing to bet that _I_ would consider them subtle. Ranma will best grow as a person, will learn the most useful lessons for himself, if he comes to understand the truth of Nabiki Tendo on his own rather than simply being fed with it. Even apart from everything we've said so far, that would be reason enough not to hit him over the head with those particular facts. "

" I can do all that, " Shampoo said, feeling her usual optimism finally begin to resurface. She paused for a while to think back over the things she'd shared lately with Ranma, which strengthened the feeling considerably. After all, if her husband loved her enough he could do what she couldn't, and convince his mother of her worth and Nabiki's calumny. No matter how much credit the heartless, conniving liar had amassed with Nodoka, the woman would certainly weigh her own son's words more strongly than Nabiki's... or any Tendo's. With a smile on her face and a reasonably light heart, she said, " I'll be happy to do all that, Great-Grandmother. "

-----------------------

"Never thought I'd be grateful to that Hawaii headcase," Ranma said conversationally, peering down to the ground below. His vantage point on the highest roof of Furinkan gave him a good view of the chaos. In the far corner of the soccer field, a massive collection of firepits burned merrily. The grounds near the school were littered with potted palm trees, each of which bore the sign 'Courtesy of the Flower Arrangement Club'. Students dashed and stumbled through those trees, cursing and fuming and attempting to catch the thirty-odd pigs that were desperately trying to find their way to freedom. The gates were blocked by the biggest sand dune ever seen in inner-city Nerima, and there was no other way out unless you could jump or fly. Ranma shook his head as he caught sight of a few bewildered freshmen who had apparently believed they needed to listen to Kuno Sr.'s dress code instructions for today's extracurricular activity. The guys in swim trunks and incredibly tacky floral shirts weren't so bad, but the girls wearing only grass skirts and leis...

"Ranma honey?" Ukyo's tentative voice came from behind him. "Why'd you bring me up here? Shouldn't we be down there helping everybody round up those porkers?"

"Nah," he replied. "The way I figure it, I've paid my dues on these stupid stunts the principal likes to pull. Every time during my first year here, I mighta gotten some help but in the end I had to be the one to deal with everything. Well, there's a whole new bunch of underclassmen, an' enough of them are good enough fighters that I can afford to sit this one out."

"Hmm." The chef walked over to stand beside him, looking down at the craziness with one eye. The other stayed on Ranma, making sure he wasn't just using this as an excuse to ogle those underdressed little do-what-you're-told sheep. "If you say so, Sugar."

"Besides, so far I've spotted three separate pigs that are the spittin' image of P-chan," Ranma continued. "You know as soon as I run down one of 'em, knock him out, and start dragging him over to the barbecue, Akane's gonna pop out of thin air and freak."

Ukyo let out a cheerful laugh. "You're probably right. I guess it is better for us to stay up here, where it's nice and quiet."

_'Yeah, and hopefully it's gonna stay that way, without anybody interrupting,' _Ranma thought, glancing behind him to the door that led inside the building. It was locked, barred, and chained as part of the principal's latest caper, which had just meant that he'd carried Ukyo as he jumped here from a lower rooftop. He didn't think anyone else at Furinkan could make that leap, so hopefully this talk would go as smoothly as possible.

He didn't want to get into the heavy stuff quite yet, though. Pushing it out of his mind for a little while longer, he looked over the roof again. He blinked at the sight of Ryoga stumbling dazedly out of a particularly thick stand of palm trees, and watched the ensuing madness with a widening grin, then chuckles, then full-blown, outright laughter.

"Oh, man, Ucchan," he finally wheezed, stepping back to the middle of the roof. "That was the funniest stuff I've seen in a long time."

"Did you see Ryoga's face when Akane told him to help her rescue 'P-chan' from the Sumo club?" she giggled. "I thought I was going to hurt myself laughing."

"Not to mention the part when that chick from the Flower Arrangement club got ticked at how many of their trees he was busting up," Ranma said, no longer laughing but still smiling widely. "Next time I see Bacon Boy I'm gonna have to ask him what it felt like, to get his butt handed to him by a girl using a style like that."

"Well, to be fair he didn't exactly _lose_," Ukyo pointed out. "When he smashed out of that giant Venus Flytrap he was facing the wrong way, and I don't think he even realized it when he kept on going and smashed through the boundary wall too."

"Prob'ly realized it when all those pigs raced out the hole after him and trampled him down," Ranma replied.

Ukyo blinked. "That's what happened? You could see it from where you were standing?"

"Nah," he replied, "I'm just hoping."

The two of them shared another round of laughter, then a few moments of companionable silence. Ranma eventually let out a long, satisfied sigh. "Y'know, Ucchan, it feels kinda strange. I know just how big of a pain that would've been, if I'd actually been down in it dealing with everything. But when I wasn't, when I just stood back and watched and let other people clean up the mess, it was really, really funny." He mused on this for a moment. "Wonder if that's how my life usually is for other people."

"Maybe," she allowed. "Not really for me, cause no matter how crazy it gets it's not funny to me if you're the one getting hurt. But for somebody who didn't know you, or at least didn't care about you... yeah, I could see that." It was her turn for a few seconds of silent brooding. "I'm pretty sure that's how Nabiki looks at it, actually."

"Yeah... Nabiki." He frowned. "That's part of why I brought you up here, Ucchan. I gotta talk to you about some stuff that's happened lately."

"What's the matter, Sugar? Is Nabiki giving you grief?"

"Hmm, when you put it that way... Well, yes and no. Lemme just give you the whole story," Ranma said. Taking a deep breath, he proceeded to do just that, telling her of his return to the Tendo home on Wednesday, the message Nabiki had left for him with her lieutenants, his father's late-night return and the agreement that Nodoka would join the Tendo household for now, the fact that Genma was finally cured of the panda, his mother's happiness and pride in him, and the conversations they'd had and the time they'd spent together in the days since her arrival. He left out his nocturnal visit to Shampoo, though. Ukyo hadn't yet asked him about any kind of follow-up on the last serious conversation they'd had, and Ranma wanted to keep it that way for as long as possible. Maybe this situation with his mother would be enough to push that one so far into the background, that he'd actually know how to deal with it by the time it came up again.

"So that's why I was grateful to Principal Kuno," he explained. "I wanted to tell you about this stuff, an' I needed a chance to do it when there wasn't anybody else around to interrupt. I kinda thought about it yesterday at lunch, but... I just wasn't ready to do it then."

"I can imagine," she said faintly. "Ranchan, I... I don't know where to start." After a pause, she continued, "You said your mom's proud of you, and you guys have been getting along real well... so that screwed-up promise is out of the way for good now, right?"

"I hope so," he said. "Everything Mom's said so far sounds like she does think Pop fulfilled his promise. But she ain't come out and said it, or even talked about the stupid thing at all. Unless she's discussing it with Pop in private at night."

"Well, he hasn't run for the border yet, which means nothing bad. So unless you've seen him looking all smug and self-satisfied, she probably hasn't said anything at all," Ukyo mused. "But I'm sure she's thinking it, Ranchan! She's finally got a chance to see what a great guy you really are, to know how proud she should be as your mother! If you ask me, she's probably just not making her official pronouncement yet cause she wants Genma to sweat a little longer." The chef's grin showed most of her teeth. "I sure wouldn't blame her for that."

"Nah, I don't think that's it," Ranma said. "It ain't just me, Ucchan; she's also real happy to be back with Pop."

Ukyo's jaw dropped. "Huh?" she said feebly.

"What?" Ranma asked. Sure, there was little love lost between his oldest friend and his father, for good reason. But it still felt like Ukyo was overreacting here. "She is his wife, after all. She loves him. If she didn't, I wouldn't even be here today."

"Maybe... you should tell me a little more about her," Ukyo suggested. "I mean, what is _she_ like? Just by looking at you and contrasting you to your old man, I kinda assumed she was kind, honorable, caring, determined, strong, brave, smart, good-looking... you know, all those things you are and he's not. And she must be really high up there on all those points," Ukyo continued, missing the way Ranma's expression had darkened slightly, "cause you've spent hardly any time with her and she _still_ passed them all on to you strong enough to survive Genma's blundering."

"Ucchan..." His tone accomplished what the look in his eyes hadn't. Ukyo clamped her mouth shut, blinking. "Look. I know Pop's made some bad mista—" He cut himself off, and said, "No. Bad _decisions_. And I know he really screwed up your life with one of the worst of 'em. But he ain't some kind of demon that Happosai dragged up outta hell to teach Anything Goes to. You and I both have seen people lots worse than him. And he may have screwed up our engagement, but he also admitted to it in front of all those students at Furinkan. Admitted flat out, before witnesses, that you were my fiancée."

"What's your point?" she asked.

"My point is that he knows he made a mistake, he don't know how to fix it, and even though I know he'd rather your engagement just kinda went away, he didn't try to lie about it or make out like it wasn't valid no more. He could've done a whole lot worse than he did there, Ucchan." When the girl gave a reluctant nod, Ranma continued, "And then of course there's the very first fight you had with him."

"What about that fight?"

"Did he even put up a fight at all?" he asked. "Or did he just kinda freeze in his tracks when he found out who you were?" He hadn't seen any of the encounter, but he had arrived soon enough afterward to see Genma down, his assailant not even slightly battered... and he knew that if his father fought for real, he could have taken Ukyo.

"The second one," she confirmed grudgingly. "Okay, maybe I get where you're going with this. At first he at least looked like he was ready to fight, but after I told him who I was he just staggered backward and dropped his guard faster than a diet and day job rolled into one. I smashed him flat and he didn't even try to defend himself... and maybe," by now her voice had sunk to a near growl, as the chef was having real difficulty getting this admission out, "maybe I went a little easier on him because of that. For years and years I'd been dreaming about opening the biggest can of can of whoop-ass in the history of Japan on that schmuck, and there he is, looking so horrified and so pathetic..."

_'A little easier on him? Yeah, right. You beat on him less than I do in our sparring sessions.'_ Still, he supposed it was understandable that she wouldn't like to admit just how little she'd really done back to the man who'd done so much to her. "He'll run from his mistakes, and he'll tell me to deal with them," Ranma said with a snort. "I ain't trying to make excuses for him, and I'm sure not trying to take away any of the debt he owes you. But that don't mean you should sell him short, or somehow think it's all Mom's credit that I turned out as good as I did. For better or for worse, it was my old man who raised me, and I can say this—all along he tried to make me be a better man than him."

"So why is this such a big deal, anyway?" she asked. "I guess you've got a point, but for dang sure you've done more complaining about your father than I ever have. Why's it so important all of a sudden not to sell him even a little short?"

Ranma pondered that for a few moments. "I guess it's because of the way you were doin' it. Bashing on Pop is one thing. But takin' away some of the good stuff he legitimately earned with his life so you can pin it on Mom... It's like, I dunno... feels like it's an attack on my whole family."

"I wouldn't do that, Ranma," Ukyo said quietly.

"I know, Ucchan. Ah, heck," he said, heaving an exasperated sigh. "I probably couldn't do a worse job of talking about this if I tried. It's the kind of stuff I never even thought about for so long. It's real confusing to try to work through it now, all at once. But..." He fell silent again, doing his best to understand at least some of what was tumbling through his mind. "But... yeah. Getting back with Mom isn't just about me and her getting to be together, not any more. It ain't about me and Pop not having to go through with killing ourselves, it ain't even about her not being disappointed in me. All those things are part of it, but there's a lot more. It's about Mom and me being happy together, as a mother and her son. And it's about Mom and Pop getting back together so they can pick up where they left off, about them being what a husband and wife are supposed to be." He gave a faint grin. "Not gonna pretend I understand everything about what that really means, but at least I got a better idea now than I did when Pop first dragged me to the Tendos."

"I understand, Ranma honey," Ukyo said, reaching out hesitantly and laying her hand on his shoulder. "It's like you said before. It's about family, and really becoming one again when you haven't been for so long."

"Yeah." He offered her a stronger smile. She answered with a matching grin, gave his shoulder a squeeze, then let her hand fall.

Silence stretched for a few moments before the chef spoke again. "So when do I get to meet my future mother-in-law?"

His smile faded. "I dunno," he answered. "I want things to get at least a little more settled before I start springing the big surprises on her, you know? And maybe if I can talk to her some more, I'll be able to kind of prepare the way, build up to it. At least I might be able to figure out the best way to tell her about some of the bigger things that're lurking out there."

"Geez, you really know how to make a girl feel special," Ukyo muttered. Louder, she said, "All right, Sugar. I'll hold my horses, I guess. But remember, if you wait too long and everything blows up in her face at once, it's gonna be ugly. She's gonna have to find out about at least some of what your old man got up to. Better to spread the surprises out over time, if you ask me."

"Whaddaya think I'm trying to do?" Ranma riposted. "I already had one fight with Akane since Mom came back, with her pulling her usual junk of trying to tell me just what to do an' getting all ticked when I didn't. Mom didn't see that one, but I figure it's only a matter of time. Prob'ly not much time at all before she picks up on the fact that Akane ain't nearly the fiancée she thought at first."

"You know, Ranma honey, that's a very good point," the chef admitted. "Okay, I'm feeling a lot less impatient now."

-----------------------

"So, I guess you come here often, huh Mom?" Ranma asked. It seemed a pretty safe guess. They'd had to take a ride on a bullet train to reach this café, and all the employees seemed to have an extra bit of warmth and recognition in their smiles toward Nodoka. Not to mention the fact that his mother had actually introduced him to the proprietress as her son.

"Quite often, dear," Nodoka replied. "Of course I won't be able to while we remain guests of the Tendos, but I wanted to come at least once to show off my wonderful, manly son!"

Ranma ducked his head, blushing and grinning. "Th- Thanks, Mom."

"You're very welcome," she returned serenely, taking a sip of her tea. Ranma took a few swallows of his as well, letting the embarrassment and goofy happiness subside a little. After a few moments had passed, Nodoka spoke again. "I know you didn't see much of the neighborhood yet, but is it stirring any memories?"

He blinked. "Memories? Uh, no, Mom. Should it?"

"Well, our house is only a short distance away. I thought we might stop by there for a few minutes, before returning to the Tendos." She smiled at him. "I've kept your room just the way you left it."

"Oh," was all he could manage. "Um. That'd be nice, I guess." Though it would also have been nice to hear about this further in advance. "But what about Pop? Shouldn't we have him along for that first visit back home?"

Nodoka sighed. "I thought so too, and I wanted to bring him... but Akane was so vehement about not losing her afternoon training session..."

Ranma frowned at that, an expression almost as dark as the ones he so often provoked in that girl. _'That tomboy is going too far. If she thinks she can screw up things between Mom and Pop, she's got another think coming.'_ He fought down an urge to head back to Nerima, give Akane a piece of his mind, and drag his father out of the dojo and back to where he ought to be. By the time he did that, it would be too late to make a real visit to the Saotome home without missing supper, and it was obvious how much his mother loved cooking that meal for everyone. "Isn't this the kind of thing we ought to all do together?" he asked gently. "Why don't you and I put it off just a little longer? We can come back with Pop tonight, after dinner."

His mother chuckled quietly at this, which was not one of the possible reactions he had anticipated. "Uh, did I say something funny?"

"Not really. It's just that I've been waiting so many years for you to clean your room, and you're managing to postpone it even longer."

"Heh. Did I say 'tonight'? I meant 'a week from next Tuesday'," Ranma joked back. "But seriously, Mom, I think this is something we oughta do as a family."

"Well, I must admit that's what I wanted too," his mother said wistfully. "But will it cause you any trouble, dear? Don't you do your homework in the evenings, like Akane?"

Ranma waved one hand dismissively. "Eh, I can afford to give it a miss once, for something as important as this."

"I suppose that's mostly true," Nodoka allowed. When her son blinked, then gave her a questioning look, she continued, "I contacted the school to learn about your grades. Most of them were certainly decent enough. I must say, though, your scores in English could stand a lot of improvement. Do you think you'll have enough time for that homework at least?"

"Oh. English." Ranma gave a rueful laugh. "It's kinda funny you should bring that up, Mom. Technically it's my _best_ subject." It was Nodoka's turn for a blinking, quizzical look. He elaborated, "You know how far Pop took me on our trip, right?"

"Actually, no, I don't know many details at all about it," Nodoka confessed.

"You don't?" Ranma opened his mouth to ask why not, what had she and Genma been talking about during all the private time they had in the evenings... when up from his brainstem shot an inexplicable sense that this was a question he REALLY didn't want to ask. Deciding to obey the instinct even if he didn't understand it, he skipped ahead slightly. "Well, one of those details was half a year in America. I learned to speak real English there, not the whacked-out stuff they teach in the schools here."

Nodoka blinked again. "Really?" she said. "What they teach isn't right?"

Ranma thought back to the areas he and Genma had traveled through. "Believe you me, Mom, anybody who talked like that would've had to kick the butt of everybody he met not to have them laughin' in his face. And even then all that would accomplish is that they'd just be doin' it behind his back. It's really that bad."

His mother gave a polite little frown. "Well then, if that's the case, why don't you explain it to your teacher? Or have you tried, and he wasn't willing to listen?"

"Got it in one. Miss Hinako learned her 'Engrish' outta the textbook, so she doesn't want to listen to some kid telling her she's got it all wrong." Ranma opted not to go into the other reasons she wasn't exactly enthusiastic about taking correction from him. "And she's not about to let it slide when someone doesn't go along with what she's trying to teach. She's one of those young, idealistic senseis." That was putting it mildly, he thought with a mental grimace.

"_Miss_ Hinako? Young, you say?" An odd gleam had entered Nodoka's eye. "Is she good-looking as well, dear?"

"Huh? Yeah, I guess." He supposed that 'drop-dead gorgeous' part of the time, and 'a cute little kid' the rest could be averaged out to 'good-looking'.

"Hmm. It certainly wouldn't be right for you to have to learn something incorrect, something that might degrade the useful skills you already mastered," Nodoka pronounced. "I think it's obviously this Miss Hinako who needs to make the concessions here."

"Ain't gonna happen," Ranma said. "It's not that important, though, right? I mean, if English is something I'm gonna need, I already _got_ it. The score in that one class don't really mean anything."

"Certainly you could ignore it if necessary," she reassured him. "But it shouldn't be. If you were to seduce her, you could certainly convince her to give you a grade worthy of how well you actually know the language."

Ranma's mouth gaped feebly open for quite a long time, as he ran that sentence back, forth, and sideways through his mind, trying to find either some way other than the obvious that it could be taken, or any hint that his mother was joking. Failing at both, he was forced to ask, "Y- you aren't serious, are ya Mom?"

"Of course I'm serious," she replied. "It doesn't have to be a long-term relationship, dear, you could just give her some pleasure, excitement, and romance for a season of her life. I certainly wouldn't suggest anything permanent without even having met the woman."

"Y- you _really_ don't want to do that!" Ranma exclaimed, loud enough to draw curious glances. Realizing this, he lowered his voice as he continued, "Trust me, Mom, you wouldn't be suggestin' something like this if you knew Miss Hinako!"

"Why not?" she returned. "It would be very manly to show that you can make a conquest of someone older and presumably more experienced than you are."

_'Does she really think that?'_ Ranma asked himself with more than a little dismay. _'Damn, I knew everything was going too smoothly. Okay, look on the bright side—if this is really how Mom sees things, it's probably the best luck I had in my _life_ that Kodachi's not around any more.'_ He thought furiously for a few more seconds, reaching the conclusion that he really needed to nip this Miss Hinako thing in the bud, or at the very least find out just how bad this twist of his mother's character truly was. "I wasn't makin' myself clear," he said. "Mom, you've met Happosai, right?"

Nodoka blanched and nodded. "Please don't remind me, dear." She gave a delicate, ladylike shudder, as her fingers played unconsciously over the wrapping on the Saotome honor blade. "I hope I never again meet someone so unbalanced. A real man certainly wouldn't care more for girls' clothes than the girls themselves, but I don't think that he's even capable of understanding that! He latched onto just one aspect of being a man, ignoring all the rest and taking that one so far that it stopped having anything to do with manliness at all!" She shuddered again, more strongly than before.

_'Hmmm... if that's how bad he affects Mom, maybe I should see if Cologne will help drive him off once he finally shows back up. If I team up with her, we oughta be able to handle him just fine.'_ Aloud, he said, "Well, Miss Hinako had an encounter with the old freak back when she was real, real young. It kinda had a big effect on her development." _'Please don't ask me for more details, please don't say that means she needs a real man to help her get over it...'_

"Oh, dear. Please don't say anything more, Ranma. She sounds most unsuitable after all." Nodoka fixed him with a mock glare which didn't hide the twinkle in her eyes. "I don't want to see your English grades get even a little better, is that understood?"

"You can count on me, Mom!" Ranma saluted, using the gesture as a chance to wipe sweat off his brow.

"I know, my son. I know." Nodoka took a few serene sips of her tea, then reopened the conversation. "I suppose I shouldn't have suggested such a thing in the first place, not without even having met her. I've heard rumors about the kind of wild, unprincipled young men and women who run amok through Nerima. I supposed this Hinako is one of them?"

"Er... yeah, you could definitely say she's part of the problem." Ranma quickly reassured himself that he certainly wasn't unprincipled, and as far as 'wild' went his mother had named him herself. Still... "Uh, you haven't seen it yet, but sometimes things get a little wild even at the Tendo place."

"I know," she replied. "I've heard many stories from Kasumi, during the time I've spent helping her out around the house." The Saotome matron gave an embarrassed chuckle. "In fact, I've probably spent too much time listening and chatting with her. With two people working together, the housework should get done in half the time, but somehow it never seems to work out that way." She sighed. "Still, I find it hard to regret. She's a wonderful young woman, a genuine treasure. Nabiki as well, in her own way, even though she seems so unconcerned with tradition and the values that have made us strong. I ought to have spent more time with both girls before now."

"Yeah," Ranma said, "without them the Tendos would've fallen apart a long time ago." It was considerably easier to think about Kasumi than Nabiki as he spoke the praise, but he forced himself to give the middle Tendo her due. "They're both pretty extraordinary."

"I'm glad you feel that way, my son," Nodoka said, the gleam from before returning to her eyes stronger than ever. "Could you be a little more specific, though? What are your particular thoughts on each girl?"

Ranma quickly put one corner of his mind to work in dredging up stuff he could say about Nabiki that wouldn't bug him too much and that also wouldn't get him reamed for 'damning me with faint praise, Saotome?' if word of it ever got back to her. The rest of him responded, "Well, Kasumi's one of the strongest people I know. If you've been spending that much time talkin' with her and listening to stories about what life's like at the dojo, you gotta know how much craziness and trouble has blown through there. But I've never seen her do anything worse than just get worried, and usually she don't even do that. She's kind, gentle, always trying to look on the bright side an' help anyone around her cheer up. She's taken care of almost all the housework for who knows how long, and it ain't worn her down or made her bitter or tired." He heaved a deep, respectful sigh. "I know I couldn't've done it."

"Nor should you have had to," Nodoka pointed out with a smile. Then, hinting, "Is there anything else?"

"I'm sure there's a lot of stuff," Ranma said, his tone indicating that he wasn't sure what his mother was fishing for. "No way I could do her justice in a quick little summary like that."

"Hmmm. And what about Nabiki?"

Fortunately, by now he was prepared. "Well, she's impressive in a whole lot of other ways than Kasumi. Like you said, Mom, she ain't traditional at all. Far as I can tell, she doesn't care about what society says she oughta limit herself to, doesn't think even for a minute that she should be afraid to use something she's got. She never bothers getting people to underestimate her, and she still beats them. Kasumi might be the heart of the Tendo home, but Nabiki's its brain."

"Yes," Nodoka mused, "that's a very good description, Ranma. Nabiki is the sort who would make a much better mistress than a wife. I'm sure you agree."

"Uh... huh?" Ranma blinked. Well, he supposed that was true. At least from what he vaguely understood of the matter, mistresses were _supposed_ to be expensive.

"The same thing isn't true at all of Kasumi, of course," Nodoka continued. "She would make a wonderful wife, and really is better suited for that role than just being a mistress. Still, circumstances being what they are, sometimes half a loaf is the best one can settle for..."

This time Ranma ignored the warning screaming up from the base of his skull. He wasn't about to let any kind of misunderstanding like this develop. Kasumi deserved better than that, and if he was going to contest the point for the eldest sister, he was darn well going to do it for the middle one as well. "Mom, you ain't seriously suggesting I should be thinking about trying to take either of them as a mistress, are ya?"

"Whyever not?" Nodoka asked, plainly befuddled at the question. "You've lived with them for more than a year; surely you've noticed that they care for you. I admit that I'm not sure just how strong Kasumi's feelings for you are, whether they're enough for her to settle for being your mistress rather than a wife in her own right. But I'm confident that Nabiki at least is seriously considering it."

Ranma gaped. "R- Really?" he asked as plaintively as he ever had any question in his life. It was taking all the mental strength he had to keep his panic under control. _'No way, that can't be right! Nabiki... that's not... she can't...'_ Fortunately, the long periods of uninterrupted thought he'd been enjoying lately had apparently taught him some things, and the solution blazed forth quickly even in the midst of such stress. _'Of course not. What's happening here is that Nabiki put a little too much into the act, what with tellin' Mom all that stuff about what a great guy I am. Heh, wish I could afford to tease her about that slip-up.'_ He gave a quick sigh of relief.

"Ranma..." His mother's tone and expression killed that emotion in him as quickly as it had been born. "You don't seem even a little pleased at the thought. In fact, it almost seems like you thought that was bad news."

He couldn't find anything to say back in response, and Nodoka's expression became a little more pained. "Son, how can you not be happy at the idea that such lovely young ladies might want to be with you? Might be willing to give up so much for your sake?"

Unfortunately he'd exhausted his supply of quick, insightful thought in piercing Nodoka's misunderstanding about Nabiki. He didn't do so well this time. "Um, well, it's just that... Akane! You ain't spent near enough time around her yet, Mom. She'd blow seventeen different gaskets at once if she caught even a hint of me thinkin' something like that."

The look on his mother's face informed him immediately that he'd just dug the hole deeper. "Ranma, that isn't right at all! Well, I can't speak on Akane's behalf," she amended, "and from what I've seen and heard so far, that might not be so very far from the truth. But it should be _her_ protest to make, if anyone is going to make it. Not yours! A man should love, honor, and respect his wife, to be sure, but he must also remember what place is hers and what is his. No true man should be intimidated by his wife, or even worse, afraid of her!"

"Gesundheit, Pop," Ranma muttered under his breath, knowing that wherever his father was, he was currently rubbing his nose.

Nodoka didn't notice the interruption. She took a deep breath as if to brace herself, then continued, "Ranma. I need to know just what Genma has taught you in this area. How did he instruct you to behave toward your wife and women in general?"

_'At least she ain't fingering that sword like she wants to pull it out,'_ he thought, uncomfortably aware of how bad things were if _that_ was all he could find in the way of a silver lining. He forced himself to think quickly, scraping together all the things Genma had told him about girls, leaving in even the stuff that he suspected wouldn't exactly please his mother; it was too late to think about editing anything other than the absolute worst. "He's told me that as a guy, it's my responsibility to look out for girls, to protect them and keep them safe from stuff they can't handle. He's said when they're sad or angry or hurt, it's my responsibility to make them feel better. I'm the one who has to be strong, to give them what they need, and I should definitely put their needs ahead of mine."

"All of that sounds good," Nodoka said. "Though care does need to be taken with that last one... But go on. What about your wife?"

He shrugged. "Same thing, only more so. Gotta go twice as far to look out for her, give her what she needs an' wants, keep her safe and well." And—from Genma's example—either cravenly knuckle under to her or go behind her back if she wanted something he wasn't willing to give, but if they wanted him to say _that_ to his mother, wild horses were going to have to drag it out of him. Taking a deep breath, Ranma said what he hoped would be all he was going to have admit to: "He raised me to honor, respect, and save myself for the woman who was gonna be my wife. Ain't nothing Pops ever said about it being manly to spread myself around."

"I see," Nodoka said quietly, looking down at her teacup. "Is that... is that how you feel, Ranma? Is that really how you see your future? That you would marry Akane and look only at her, not sparing even a glance or a second thought for any other girl, no matter how much she loved you and was willing to give up to be with you?"

"...NO!" The exclamation rang throughout the café, startling Ranma as much as anyone else. For a long moment he wasn't even aware that it was himself who had spoken; he was too caught up in trying to subdue, or at least work his way through, the whirling turmoil his mother's question had raised in his mind.

He didn't really understand what had happened until Nodoka let out a long sigh and said gently, "Ranma, my dear son... you aren't sure what you want, are you? Part of you thinks you ought to go along with what your father's told you, the ideals he's presented to you all along. But there's another part of you, one that won't be pushed into something so limited as that. It's been there for a while now, and it's growing stronger. Am I right?"

"Uh... yeah, Mom. I, I think you are," he said feebly, not sure he had any more answers than that for himself at the moment, let alone his mother.

"It's certainly understandable." Nodoka heaved another sigh, one more melancholy than relieved. "In most ways Genma did a wonderful job of raising you, Ranma. Even with this, he has more than kept his promise to me. But there's no denying it—in this one area, he fell a little short. There's no way a wonderful young man like you should think you have to limit yourself to just one girl."

Ranma was silent for another couple of minutes, doing his best to think things through. At the end of that time, the best conclusion he had reached was that now wasn't the time to try to work through all of the personal ramifications of this. That could wait until he had plenty of air time. The best thing to do now was get a better grasp on the elements of this situation that weren't tied so intimately to him. Maybe he could make sense of at least some of what his mother was trying to say. "Okay... but Mom, how does that fit with the stuff I said earlier, that you said was good?" he wanted to know. "I'm talking about not hurting girls, and giving them what they need. Akane might eventually get to the point where she don't immediately have a nuclear meltdown over hearing something like that, but there's no way in the world she could ever accept it."

"I don't believe that," Nodoka reassured him. "You're young still, Ranma, and Akane is much younger." At the sight of his expression, she checked what she had been about to say and waited for him to reply.

"Huh?" Ranma said eloquently. "Mom, there's only a couple months difference between our ages."

"I'm not talking about that kind of age, dear," she explained. "I'm talking about how much of life you've seen, and how many lessons you've learned from it, and how many there are still to be learned. It's true for you, of course, but from what I've seen it's much more true for Akane. I'm going to do my best to help her with them."

_'Hoo boy. I can see the storm clouds on the horizon,'_ he thought to himself.

"You don't have to look so uncertain, dear," she reassured him. "And you don't have to feel so confused. Akane is wrong, and that part of you that's been growing stronger all this time is right. I..." She fell silent, her face taking on a crestfallen look.

Ranma quickly pushed aside his own cares and worries. "Mom? What's wrong? You look sadder all of a sudden."

"It's... well, it's just that..." Nodoka hung her head. "I don't think I was being fair to Genma earlier. Or to you. It's true that this is a lesson that he didn't teach you, that you need to learn, but it's also true that you're already in the process of learning it. If I had waited for you to come back to me, instead of hurrying to you, I believe you would already have learned it by the time we were a family again."

"Is... is that what you would have wanted, Mom?" he asked. "I, I don't know what all to tell ya here. This is confusing and there's no way I'm gonna work through it all anytime soon... but I will say that it's important, and talking to you has at least helped me see that... and see there's more here I need to figure out, need to know just what it is I want... Would you rather I'd gotten all that nailed down before Pop and I saw you again?"

"It, it's what you promised," she said, reluctantly enough that Ranma was almost surprised she had managed to get the words out.

"Is it what you'd have wanted?" he asked, more gently than before. "Or would you rather know you're helping me work through some stuff I need to get settled?"

"I... well... that is to say..." Nodoka gave a trembling, watery-eyed smile, then looked down. "I am glad," she managed quietly, pulling out a handkerchief and dabbing at her eyes. "Maybe I shouldn't be, but I am glad I can help you in this, my son."

The table was too wide to reach across it and lay a hand on his mother's shoulder, and there was no room on her side to scoot in next to her and offer a hug. Ranma settled for watching her for a few moments, until he was sure that despite the tears, his mother wasn't hurting—she was feeling relief and happiness. He looked away, staring off into the distance with eyes wide and a small smile on his lips. "How about that," he murmured. "Shampoo was right after all."

He had thought he'd spoken too quietly to be heard, but he was wrong. Nodoka gave her eyes one last dab, then looked up, blinking. "Who is Shampoo?"

-----------------------

The wind whistled past him as he flashed through the air, higher and higher, reaching his apex, then descending again. In this form, at least for now, gravity still had the final say. As he touched down on the rooftop and leaped again, Ranma resolved to take the afternoon off and spend it in flight. Hopefully everything would go well enough to permit that.

Another three roof-hops brought him to his destination. He paused on the edge of the roof, surveying the street below. There were more people there than he'd expected, but certainly not enough to make it unsafe to jump down. More importantly, he hadn't gotten here too soon or too late—his mother had just sat down on a bench.

Deciding to show off a little, he jumped, landing not on the pavement but the streetlight next to her. "Hey, Mom," he called out. Once she'd spotted him and greeted him with a smile of mixed surprise, pleasure, and pride, he stepped forward and dropped gracefully down beside her. "You ready to head on in?"

"Yes, we'd better hurry," Nodoka replied. "I know you said it would be all right with your teacher if you got back to Furinkan a little late, but I'm certain you wouldn't want to miss the entire class period after lunch."

"Don't be so sure of that, Mom," he said, covering a spasm of nerves with a grin. "Remember, we weren't coming here just so we could eat lunch." He turned away from her to face the restaurant directly... and stopped in his tracks. As he'd already noticed, there was more traffic in the lane than usual, and all the pedestrians seemed to have the same destination. Through its windows he could see that the building was filled as full as he'd ever seen, almost to capacity. "Uh... maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all," he murmured feebly.

"Is it not normally this busy?" Nodoka wondered, proving once again that her hearing was sharper than her son realized.

"You could say that." Especially not over the last... however many days and weeks it had been since the Cat Café shifted to delivery-only mode. He and Shampoo had agreed on this plan and ironed out the details together, to allow the Amazon to meet and get to know his mother. It had seemed like a great idea at the time, but apparently they'd both drastically underestimated the effect reopening the place to the general public would have. Well, it looked like the ruse had blown a fuse, Ranma thought—there was no way Shampoo was going to be able to serve all those customers and still have time for any remotely meaningful conversation. She was good, but not _that_ good. Heck, he didn't even think he could have done it!

_'Oh well, maybe we can try again tomorrow, get Cologne to stay open one more day. Probably won't be so crowded the day after the 'grand reopening','_ he thought. In the meantime, he and his mother might as well go ahead with lunch. Surely even with the crowds he could count on Shampoo to slip him a little preferential treatment and bump other orders down the queue below theirs. He might not even miss any class at all, and what a relief that was, Ranma thought sarcastically. With no further delay, he led his mother forward and into the restaurant.

He wasn't sure what he'd expected to see once he got inside, but four other girls waiting tables alongside Shampoo wasn't it.

Ranma stopped dead in his tracks, boggling at the sight in front of him. Not only were there four new waitresses (four cute, busty waitresses at that!), each one sported a hair color that in Japan only came out of a bottle. You had to go to China to find girls with such natural shades, in his experience—and one particular corner of China at that. For a moment Ranma felt a pang of true fear. He and Shampoo had only decided on this yesterday, late in the evening. They hadn't even cleared the plan with Cologne yet by the time he left. Ranma had thought it was at least a possibility that the Matriarch might put the veto on their proposal, but he certainly hadn't thought she might somehow be able to produce a few more Chinese Amazons to help with it!

Then he looked a little closer. The only girl moving through the tables with a warrior's grace and serving the customers with true flair and élan was Shampoo herself. All the waitresses had smiles on their faces, true, but four of those expressions looked more like masks to cover fear and desperation than anything real. The bowls and platters flying out of the kitchen toward Shampoo were moving with Cologne's usual nerve-wracking speed, but those aimed at the other girls floated with the delicacy of cherry blossoms drifting to earth. Even a non-martial artist could catch those without trouble, which Ranma supposed was a good thing... that was exactly what these newcomers were. And now that he was looking closely, he could make out the subtle facial signs that indicated they were as Japanese as he was.

He breathed a quiet sigh of relief. Cologne whipping up more Chinese Amazons out of nowhere in less than a day was a scary thought. Cologne hiring a bunch of temps and browbeating them into dying their hair just for one day's work was merely funny.

"Welcome to Cat Café!" Unsurprisingly, it was Shampoo who exited the dining area and greeted the Saotomes. "Please come right this way!" She led them to a medium-sized table in a corner of the room, gave them each a menu and a big smile, then whisked herself away to field more orders.

"Should we have been able to get a table so quickly?" Nodoka wondered. "It almost looked like this one was being held in reserve for us."

"Sure did," Ranma agreed, once again putting on a cocky grin while he pushed down the butterflies in his gut.

"In other words, my son thoughtfully set up a reservation even though he didn't know it would be this crowded," Nodoka said, filling in the gaps. "However..."

"Huh? What is it, Mom?"

"Well, I was expecting three place settings...?" The table was large enough to seat four comfortably, but as Nodoka had pointed out, there were napkins, silverware, and glasses of water for only two people. "I know you wanted it to be something of a surprise, dear, but from the things you've said I thought this mysterious 'Shampoo' was going to be joining us. Was I wrong?" Nodoka asked. "Did you just mean that you were going to tell me something more than just her name?"

"No. It's just that... Well... Hm. Tell you what, Mom," he said slowly. "This ain't the kind of thing you should try to figure out ahead of time. I didn't mean for ya to even get as far as you did. I just meant for you to expect to learn something more today, not specifics about just what exactly was gonna go down." He paused for few moments, carefully thinking through what he needed to say. "Don't... don't try to go into this expecting something you've already seen, or that's already familiar to you. That's just not how things work in this town. Best thing you can do now is figure out what you want for lunch, then sit back and enjoy the floor show."

"Ah... All right," his mother said, her tone and expression informing him that she was confused but still ready to go along with his advice. She glanced around the restaurant as if wondering whether there was a hidden surprise waiting to burst out at her, noted absently, "It looks like we got the best waitress as well as the best seating," then turned her attention to the menu. After leafing through it for a moment, she looked back at her son with one eyebrow quirked. "The 'Saotome Special'?" she asked, pointing to the single most expensive order.

"Huh?" Ranma blinked, before flipping to the indicated page. He'd noticed right away that there was a new layout to the menus, and sure enough, his signature order appeared to have gained official status. _'Geez, is that how much it would cost if they didn't let me have it on the house? Oh well, they wouldn't even be here running a highly successful restaurant if it wasn't for me.'_ "Eh heh heh... you're probably not that hungry, Mom," he said.

"Probably not," she agreed with a smile.

A few minutes later, both had decided what they wanted. Almost as soon as they'd set down their menus, Shampoo was there with another big smile to take their orders. The Saotomes watched as their waitress disappeared into the kitchen instead of simply leaving the order on the connecting counter, then turned their attention back to the general hustle and bustle around them.

A few minutes passed without more than desultory small talk between mother and son. It quickly became apparent that the remaining girls were feeling the absence of Shampoo. "I hope that—" Nodoka cut herself off as a whirling, blurring missile shot out of the kitchen, arced high overhead through the dining area, dipped down and brushed against the sign in the window, then boomeranged back and out of sight. The sign, meanwhile, was flipped from 'Open' to 'Closed'.

"Were ya saying something, Mom?" Ranma asked.

"Just that I hoped it wasn't going to get much busier before that girl comes back from her break, since it looks like the remaining waitresses have nearly reached their limit," the Saotome matron explained in a dazed voice.

Ranma eyed the girls in question, compared their labors to his own waitressing stint, and found himself unable to dredge up even a hint of sympathy.

"I know this area is famous for its martial arts devotees," Nodoka continued, "but are there many places such as this? It almost seems a little... well... over the top, to go to such lengths to put on a display for the customers."

"If that was the only reason for doin' it, you'd be right, Mom. But it's not," her son explained. "Yeah, it's impressive for the people at the tables, but more importantly than that, it's training for whoever's waiting on them."

"Well, when you put it that way, I suppose it would be nice to be paid to train," she mused. "And like you said, it definitely is an impressive sight!"

That was Shampoo's cue to reappear out of the kitchen, Ranma's order and Nodoka's balanced easily on a tray. She wove her way through the tables and set the food down before them, gave a quick bow and brilliant smile, then resumed active duty.

Ranma was halfway through his order before he noticed his mother apparently hadn't started yet. "Mom?" he asked after swallowing one last mouthful of noodles. "Something wrong? That is the order you wanted, right?"

"Oh yes, dear, there's certainly nothing wrong with the food," Nodoka replied with a secretive little smile. "I did take one bite. It tastes every bit as delicious as it looks and smells. Almost as if it were prepared by hand with special care." Her son put one hand behind his head and gave a sheepish chuckle, and her smile grew. "And what a pretty, skilled, cheerful girl that was, delivering it to us. Some of the older ladies I know might look down on her for being Chinese, but I always thought they were just being too closed-minded in their views. That might matter in a wife, but certainly not in a mistress."

_'Okay, the 'subtle' part of this was a pretty miserable failure,'_ he thought. _'Let's hope nothing else goes wrong, like Mom repeating that last line right to Shampoo's face.'_ Ranma managed another sheepish chuckle, then returned his attention to his food. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see his mother's wide, satisfied smile as she began eating her order of mushroom ramen. He timed his own pace to finish at the same time she did, and even as the last bite slid down his throat, his body was sliding over to make room on the bench.

"How much Ranma already let slip to Honored Mrs. Saotome without even mean to?" Shampoo asked conversationally, sliding into the space he'd so graciously made.

"Enough to make this introduction a formality, I think," Nodoka said, her eyes twinkling. "As you said, I am Nodoka Saotome, Ranma's mother. And you...?"

Shampoo smiled her best Cheshire Cat grin. "As _you _said, I am Shampoo. Ranma's fiancée."

Nodoka blinked, the twinkle and smile fading into a look that showed only bewilderment. "I'm sorry, did you say... his fiancée?"

Ranma, gaping, echoed the question mentally. _'Huh? But... why?' _ He had actually _told_ her that it was okay to use the 'W' word here, and hadn't _that_ been a scary block of conversation! But Ranma had thought it through long and hard, in the time that passed between his Wednesday afternoon conversation with Nodoka and his Thursday evening rendezvous with Shampoo, and the more he'd considered it the more reasonable his conclusion had seemed. He didn't know how many other fiancées he might have lurking in the shadows, but this one girl at least was not part of a dishonorable mistake on Genma's part. It was a matter of cross-cultural differences, and just _how_ different Shampoo's culture was needed to be made clear from the get-go. Hence, though it might be more of an immediate shock for Nodoka to hear Shampoo call herself his wife, that shock would almost surely do more good than harm.

Well, apparently Shampoo had decided to spare his mother the majority of the shock, by siphoning the excess off into him. _'Man, I am going to give her a piece of my mind later,'_ he promised himself. _'As much of a pain as it was talking to her about that, how she just put on that wide-eyed innocent 'Shampoo no understand what Ranma try to say' act and forced me to spell it out, and then teased me afterward... She'd better have a good reason for this!'_

Shampoo couldn't see her beloved's face, situated as she was directly beside him, but she could feel the sudden tension in his body. _'Oh, yes, Ranma going to want explanation for this one for sure.'_ Well, she might have pulled a few sneaky stunts in the past just to get some time with him, but that was hardly the reason for this decision. Reminding herself that there was an important task at hand, she focused on Nodoka and replied, "Yes, Ranma defeated Shampoo in combat and won right to take her as bride by Amazon law! Very wonderful, very romantic, just what I had always hope for!"

Nodoka gaped for a few moments, then glanced helplessly away. Shampoo wondered if she were searching for the Candid Camera crew. After a few seconds, the older woman turned back and said helplessly, "Young lady, I'm afraid I'm not following you at all. Did you say you somehow... became engaged to my son because he defeated you in combat?"

"You have not hear of custom?" Shampoo deliberately didn't refer to it as an Amazon custom; from the things she'd seen in her beloved's life, parts of Japan had obviously taken up the practice at least informally. When Nodoka shook her head, the lavender-haired girl continued, "Oh well. This would be easier if you have see Joketsuzoku documentary. It come on TV sometime, here in this town at least."

"Mom, Shampoo is from a tribe of Chinese Amazons. She's actually their champion fighter," Ranma said, having recovered enough composure to reenter the conversation. "They've been around for three thousand years, or so they say anyway." He ignored Shampoo's elbow in his ribs; Champion or no Champion, with the position they were in she couldn't put significant force behind the gesture without also making it obvious to Nodoka. "In all that time they've been focused on makin' their society strong, teachin' their kids to fight and learn and never stop gettin' stronger. For example, when Shampoo here first came to town, she busted through walls instead of using doors."

"I over that now, thank Ranma very much!" the girl in question protested. It was true enough; nowadays she only did it when she didn't like whoever owned the property she was demolishing.

"So that should give you a good idea of how important it is for them to always keep growing. And that ain't just on a personal level either," Ranma continued. "The ultimate goal is to make the Amazon tribe itself stronger. That means they've been collecting secret techniques and magical stuff for all those years too... and it's why, when an Amazon warrior gets defeated by an outsider guy, she has to marry him. Get his genes for the tribe's future, or something like that, I guess." He trailed off a bit awkwardly as he realized that none of them had ever put it into words so bluntly as that. Why was that, he wondered.

Judging from the look on Nodoka's face, this explanation hadn't cleared everything up. "Then... that's... you mean to say..." She paused for a while, taking a few deep breaths as she recovered herself. With her composure restored, the Saotome matron remained silent, studying first her son, then his self-proclaimed fiancée. Back and forth, searching for answers. "Shampoo..." she eventually said, "from what my son described, you didn't have a choice. He didn't _give_ you a choice." Before either teen could recover from their shock at this misinterpretation, she continued, "You don't seem unhappy, or to have any resentment at being taken from—"

"Honored Mother, that not what Shampoo say!" the Amazon burst out, politeness and decorum shoved well out of her mind. "Ranma not know about law! Come by accident to village, defeat Shampoo not know what mean, leave before he could learn truth! Ranma never, ever force Shampoo or nobody to do something like that!"

Nodoka sighed. "Ah well. That was going to be my second guess."

"Uh... and what was your first?" Ranma forced himself to ask.

His mother blinked. "Why, that you did just what you said. Defeated their choicest flower of young womanhood to claim her for yourself. It's not like that would have been anything to be ashamed of, dear," she pointed out as her son gave a choking gurgle and slumped bonelessly, held up by Shampoo's swift hand. "From what Shampoo said, it's what her people believe in and what she herself wanted." Nodoka smiled again, her eyes flickering over the teenagers opposite her.

For her part Shampoo smiled back, and tugged Ranma so that he was leaning more of his weight on her. "Is right!" she proclaimed. "When Shampoo younger and dream of strong, kind, honorable man to claim her, always think of him come on purpose to seek me out. Was little strange to have it happen by accident, but to find someone so wonderful as Ranma, Shampoo will not complain one bit!"

"To catch a prize like my son? I should say not!" Nodoka proclaimed jovially, her smile just as wide and warm as Shampoo's.

The prize in question twitched, but gave no other sign of regaining awareness. _'Maybe if I play dead and don't open my big, fat mouth again, things won't get any crazier.'_

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"Man, I can't believe how much crazier that lunch got," Ranma complained.

"I no believe you not beat stupid Ken worse than that," Shampoo countered.

"I can't believe he picked that exact time to crash the party lookin' for a rematch." At least the interruption had happened before Shampoo and his mother could start talking grandchildren, or the act that led to them.

"I no believe neither one of us think to wear waterproof soap for lunch with you mother." Although Shampoo had no difficulty believing that Ken's crashing entrance and roaring, bellowed demand for Ranma Saotome could startle a waitress into shrieking and throwing up her tray, or that this action could propel two glasses of ice water unerringly across the entire room to douse her and Ranma.

"I can't believe Cologne didn't just storm outta the kitchen and kick his butt."

"I no can believe you think Great-Grandmother fight you battles for you. Her way is take own vengeance out of his hide afterward, if we had no do good enough job."

_'We?'_ Ranma wondered. All Shampoo had done was stand back and cheer him on. Admittedly that had been quite annoying to his opponent, but still... "I can't believe that jerk kidnapped Mom as a hostage!"

Shampoo shrugged. "I can't believe he only take her so far as first empty lot, then wait there Ranma catch up."

"Yeah. I can't believe he managed to adapt that stupid Copycat technique to grab disguises an' moves from video game characters."

"Well, Shampoo can't believe he thought it good idea to use fighting games anyway. No matter how strong moves is, fighter what can only go back and forth, not turn or step side-to-side, going to lose for sure."

"No kidding." Though Ranma would admit to being intimidated, just a little, when M. Bison had apparently burst through the door of the Cat Café and bellowed his challenge. He knew that as his reputation grew it was bound to attract stronger and stronger fighters from farther and farther afield, but that was ridiculous! "Uh... I can't believe Mom took it all in stride like that."

"Umm... um..." Shampoo chewed her lip, searching for a comeback. "Oh!" She gave a smirk of victory. "I can't believe Ranma no can believe these things, after live for past year in Nerima."

"I can't believe you forgot Mom's not _from_ Nerima," he shot directly back with his own smirk.

"Not fair!" Shampoo complained, then waved him into silence before he could reply and claim victory. "Anyway, there one other thing I can't believe." She regained her own dangerous grin. "Can't believe Ranma just let him go, now that he know Ken can copy video game characters. You think next time you enjoy fight against Seth... um, Sapphire... uh, stupid one-wing-angel from Final Fantasy 7?"

Judging from the look on her beloved's face, her fumbling with the name had not reduced the impact of the question. "Uh... 'scuse me, Shampoo," Ranma said eventually, at about the same time he finally got some color back. "I need to take care of some unfinished business."

"What that?" Shampoo asked, stepping around in front of him as he turned to go, smiling all the wider and making a victory sign with one hand. "Going to find Ken, take that copycat cloak away from him?"

"Well, duh!" Ranma shot back. "It ain't like I like doing something like that, but if it's a choice between takin' a leaf outta Pop's book and letting him come back for a rematch as Mr. 'I'm gonna destroy the freakin' WORLD unless the heroes stop me', I know for damn sure which path I'm gonna take!"

"Is no need," she proclaimed, reaching into her sleeve and pulling out the item in question, as if she were a magician and it an oversized scarf. "Shampoo take care of while Ranma carry mother back to Tendo place."

"Huh. Okay, thanks," he said, feeling the wind leave his sails as worry was replaced by relief. "Good call, Shampoo." He held out his hand to take the cloak.

"What, you think I going to give this to you?" she countered. "Airen need to think about this little more."

"What for?" he returned. "I'm the one who kicked his butt. If someone's gotta steal that thing from him, it oughta be me! I can at least claim it as a battle trophy, makes it a little less dishonorable that way. Only thing you contributed to that fight was bouncin' around and cheering for me, which distracted me almost as much as it did him!"

"Did Ranma _really_ want to admit to that?" Shampoo asked, giving him her best blushing ingénue impression.

"Urk!"

"Thought not," she giggled. "Anyway, that not what I meant for Ranma to think about. Mean that this," she flicked her wrist, causing the cloak to billow and snap like a flag in a stiff wind, "is some kind of magic thing. Shampoo for sure not keep it for own self; I give to Great-Grandmother and she pack it off for home village, to have mage look at it. That way it not bite either of us in butt, like magic do so many time already." Also, Cologne would decide whether someone needed to detain Ken for further questioning and perhaps apply the Xi Fang Gao.

"Well... okay. You're right, that probably is the safest and smartest thing to do." Ranma took a minute to think what an unknown transformative agent like Ken's kerchief might have done to him, wiped the sweat off his brow, and gave Shampoo a smile. "Y'know, Shampoo, today's been about as crazy as they get, but even with that it really hasn't been too bad."

"Glad Ranma think so too," she replied. "Was nice to meet mother, and even though we not have much time for talking, it was nice to get good start." She grinned at him. "And is always fun to watch Ranma kick powerful enemy's butt!"

"Heh. Glad to hear it." Ranma took a few seconds longer to preen.

"So why did you say you want to meet back here with Shampoo?" she asked, gesturing to the Cat Café rooftop beneath them. "Something else you want to talk about or ask, about time we got to spend with mother?"

"Oh, yeah." Might as well move the conversation along to that point. It didn't seem nearly as important as it first had, or at least not as aggravating, but he was still curious. "When you introduced yourself to her, you called yourself my fiancée. Even though I went out on a limb yesterday, tellin' you it was okay to say 'w- wife'." Ranma heard the stutter and mentally smacked himself. _'She better not say it was cause she figured I couldn't take that much heat,' _he thought moodily. _'At least, I hope that wasn't it.'_

"Shampoo thought you going to ask that," the girl said quietly. All traces of amusement were now gone from her voice, replaced by a tone that was equal parts serious, subdued, and tender. "Have been thinking about how to explain. Is not easy, not in Japanese anyway. Not think I can find right words," she admitted. "Is okay we change to curse forms for this?"

"All right," Ranma agreed. Trying to inject a lighter note back into the conversation, he added, "But don't think this is gonna get you a chance to catch me in the buff."

"No promises," Shampoo chirped as she produced a flask and splashed him with its contents. She then dumped the rest on her own head, slipped out of her clothing, and settled down to explain. "I wasn't forgetting what you said to me, or... or that it was hard for you. Please don't think I was just fooling around, or not caring that you pushed yourself so far to do that."

"Okay, I won't," he said dubiously. "At least if you can explain. I mean, you keep bouncing back and forth, Shampoo. Wife, fiancée, wife, fiancée... can I at least get some kind of stability here?"

"That's... well, really that's the problem," the avian Amazon admitted. "You know why I said 'wife' back at the beginning, right?"

"I'm assuming it's cause that's what Amazon law says, and at least at the very start that was all you were interested in going by."

"More like it's all I _had_ to go by," Shampoo countered. "But yes, that's about right. And after awhile I switched to 'fiancée'."

"When you were trying to adjust and fit in more with things here in Japan," Ranma surmised. "Am I right? I worked it out at least that far, but that's as much as I've been able to figure for sure."

"Hmm. I bet you could get at least one step farther if you really tried," Shampoo opined. She hesitated for a moment, wondering whether she should ask him to do just that. It would be gratifying to see that he really did understand her that much.

Then she decided against it. He'd worked through things this far on his own, and even though he hadn't had all the answers he'd still found enough trust in her to let go of his original negative reaction, even before receiving any explanation from her. She wasn't going to hold out on giving it to him. "It wasn't all that long ago, when I went back to 'wife'," she said quietly, turning her head so that only the corner of one eye kept watch over him. "The feeling had been building up for a while, that I wasn't being honest. That I was denying who I really was, how I really felt. I may not be so far out of place, at least not here in Nerima, but I am not Japanese. I am a Chinese Amazon, a daughter of three thousand years of history. And I am not going to hide or lie about how I really feel. I love you, with all my heart, for all my life."

Silence stretched for quite a long time in the wake of Shampoo's declaration. From the corner of her eye, she could see that Ranma's posture mirrored her own; he, too, was facing mostly away from her, only keeping track of her from the very edge of his field of vision. "I... I guess maybe I did know that after all," he admitted, the words barely loud enough to cross the air between them. "That's a big part of why I told you yesterday it was okay if you said that to Mom." Even if he hadn't been able to go that far the previous evening, when he was explaining to her just what he was trying to say and why.

"Thank you, Beloved." She had suspected that at the time, but she hadn't been sure and had been unwilling to push it quite that far. "Like I said, it wasn't a whim or anything, when I didn't take you up on that offer today."

"So... why?"

"Because of last night." Realizing that she'd misspoken, Shampoo clarified, "Late last night, after I went to bed. I spent a lot of time thinking about this, turning everything over and around in my mind. And I realized something. Remember what I said earlier, about why I changed from 'fiancée' back to 'wife'?"

Once her pause had lasted long enough for him to realize it was an actual question, he answered, "Yes, you said you... weren't being honest about how you really felt." He wasn't sure why those last eight words were a little difficult to get out.

"Right." If she'd been in her original body, she would have given him a rueful smile. "And last night I realized I'd just done the same thing all over again."

Try as he might, he could make no sense of this. "Uh... you can't cut out both 'fiancée' and 'wife', Shampoo. Not unless there's some higher level I've never even heard of."

She struggled for a moment, mastering the impulse to tease him about being so full of himself. After all, she _wanted_ him to know down to the very hollow of his bones that she loved him. "That's right," she said instead. "I can't cut both of them out. In fact, I can't drop either one of them."

"But... you can't exactly use them both," he pointed out.

"Says who?" she wanted to know. By now he was facing her directly. She turned her head to meet his eyes for a moment, then looked mostly away again. "Both of them cover different parts of how I feel."

"I don't get it," Ranma admitted. "Not the 'fiancée' part, at least."

Even for her, this next part was a little difficult to get out, but say it she did. "I love you, forever, want to spend all my life with you. That is what 'wife' means. But, but I also want you to say the same thing back to me, Ranma," she said quietly, turning her head just a little to make it easier to watch him without putting the pressure of a direct stare on him. "That you love me. That you want me. That you want to be with me for all our lives, that you choose me just like I chose you so long ago. That you would marry me by the customs you grew up with."

"Sh- Shampoo..." That he was even _able_ to stutter in spite of the Jusenkyo translation effect proved just how stunned and dizzy her proclamation had left him. Ranma was barely even aware that he was speaking. "I, I'm not ready... I mean, I can't say that..." He fell silent.

It took her quite awhile to reply, and when she did her voice was curiously choked and halting as well. He couldn't hear any hint of hurt or sorrow, though. "That... It's all right, Ranma. That's why 'fiancée' is still right too. Because it's talking about a promise and a hope for the future."

Once again he was at a loss for words. This time, try though he might, he couldn't find the right ones to answer her. Whatever they were, they weren't going to come right now. "...Okay," he eventually said, then took as deep a breath as his falcon body allowed. "Shampoo... I don't want to run away or anything, but I don't think I can manage any more of a conversation like this..."

"That's fine, Beloved. One step at a time," Shampoo advised, her voice shifting from comforting to wistful as she turned again to face him directly. "That's got to be the right way. Every time I tried to cover all the distance in one sprint, I just ended up falling flat on my face."

"Heh. I don't think either of us wants that," Ranma replied. "Anyway, I know one good way to lighten up after a real heavy conversation."

"Hmmm," she said playfully. "Are you saying we should fly, or that we should have a contest to see who could make the most bad jokes about flying?"

"The one that only you and I can do," he answered, before leaping away from the earth's grasp. "Catch me if you can!"

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Author's Notes

As I warned you at the end of chapter 6, I wrote chapters 7 and 8 simultaneously. Chapter 8 will cover what's been happening during these days from the other characters' perspectives.

While we're on the subject of perspectives, there's one thing I couldn't make one hundred percent clear within the story itself, since I was only showing Ranma's perspective on a certain event. And that is the view he has developed on the walk back from Ryugenzawa with Akane—or rather, the fact that his view is wrong. In his defense, part of his conclusion was right; based on all previous examples, one ought to expect her to be nervous, probably at least as nervous as him, if the gesture he made mattered to her. Unfortunately, our boy Saotome failed to grasp one important thing: if he himself had been so moved by recent events as to be able to make this out-of-character gesture, why should Akane not also be able to reach beyond her own limitations, and accept it without fear or stress? Too bad she couldn't reach just a little farther, and actually say something that Ranma would know meant that yes, this mattered to her. But if she could do that, or if he didn't need her to, I wouldn't be so adamantly against the Ranma-Akane matchup.

A few more original series notes: the name 'Ranma' means Wild Horse, which explains Ranma's 'his mother had named him herself' thought. For those who missed his episode, Copycat Ken was a guy who could copy other martial artists' techniques by photographing them with a camera (it's unclear whether he did this just to aid him in studying them, or if it was some kind of special move-copying ability), and could copy their very bodies (even Happosai!) by use of a large cloak. And finally, Nodoka says to Ranma that she doesn't know much about his and Genma's training trip, even though in the original series we learn that Genma had sent her letters regularly. It's my speculation that he just didn't put much detail into them (other than, you know, how well Ranma was coming along, how manly he was turning out to be, etc). This would also explain how Nodoka had not heard of Jusenkyo before this chapter; in her introductory episode, the actual wording she uses in reference to Genma's final letter to her is that he and Ranma were on a journey to an elite Chinese training ground.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this chapter and that you'll enjoy the next. I also hope that the two chapters at once makes up for the long delay since the last update. Rest assured—though my posting speed is certainly nothing to write home about, I never abandon stories once I've posted any part of them to the public. Thanks to everyone at the Refuge who gave C&C.


	8. Riding the Winds of Change, part 2

Dream of the Earthbound

A Ranma ½ fanfic by Aondehafka

Disclaimer: the Ranmaverse characters owned by Rumiko Takahashi, and all that obligatory stuff. This story based on the anime, not the manga.

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Chapter 8: Riding the Winds of Change, part 2

-----------------------

_'It still doesn't seem real,'_ Akane thought distantly. _'I wonder how much longer until it does?'_

Once again she got to her feet and paced around the room, as if the motion might help still her circling thoughts. Once again it didn't work. Her mind continued to tumble and spin, trying to come to grips with everything that had happened already this afternoon, and everything else that would once Ranma finally came back.

She glanced down at the outfit she wore. It was her favorite yellow sundress, the one that—Ranma's comments notwithstanding—she thought really did make her look nice. She had been in the middle of a workout, trying to burn away her irritation at Genma's skipping their afternoon session, when Kasumi had come bustling in. The sight of her normally unflappable sister in such a state had been the start of her current mood, seed for the confusion that had grown much larger since then. Her older sister had only had a few words of explanation to give her, telling that Nabiki had called, that she was on her way back and who was with her. As quickly as that, Akane had had to abandon her workout, hurry in to take a bath, and dress nicely for their unexpected, critically important guest.

The youngest Tendo paused in her pacing. She sent a quick, anxious glance toward the kitchen, straining her ears and picking up the clinking of pots and pans, and underneath that the soft, pleasant hum of conversation between Nodoka and Kasumi. It was one silver lining, at least; Akane had been on the verge of panic when Nodoka first arrived, uncertain how she could possibly handle the conversation that was sure to follow. Nodoka always took a special interest in her, which was only natural since Ranma was her fiancé, and whenever Nodoka wanted to discuss her little boy it had never been easy for Akane to navigate the verbal minefield. With all the things that had happened lately, she honestly didn't know whether she could have kept from blurting out the wrong thing to the Saotome matron.

It had therefore come as a very pleasant surprise when Nodoka didn't settle down for a long eager chat with her, but rather asked Kasumi if she might help out with dinner tonight. Nodoka had explained, with a wistfulness that made Akane's own heart clench unpleasantly, that she so wanted to have a hand in preparing this meal, the first that she would share with her son after so long. Nodoka had invited Akane to help as well, but the youngest Tendo had politely bowed out, hiding her relief at the reprieve as best she could. Things were still terribly uncertain, but so far at least Akane Tendo hadn't made them worse.

On that note she turned on her heel and stalked back to her original seat on a cushion. She settled down on it and fired a piercing stare across the room, doing her best to silently pull Nabiki's attention away from her manga. Her middle sister was lounging in a bean-bag chair, her presence here in the family room rather than up in her bedroom her sole nod to propriety and hospitality. She'd even changed clothes, leaving behind the modest, pleasant outfit she'd been wearing when she came back with Nodoka and donning a more usual halter top and short shorts combo.

When five minutes of the stare achieved exactly no results, Akane cleared her throat. "Nabiki, could we talk?"

Nabiki didn't look up from her manga. "Sure thing, Akane," she returned in a voice pitched just loud enough to reach her sister. "Just as soon as we can do it without screwing everything up for Ranma when we get overheard."

"But... Nabiki, I don't..."

This time Nabiki did look up from her manga, firing back a cool stare that nonetheless took most of the wind out of her sibling's sails. "Little sister, I know you don't know what to do." _'The only thing unusual about that is you admitting to it.'_ "The answer is simple—just sit back and keep quiet. Let Ranma and his mother get back together without trying to get involved. Too many cooks spoil the miso and all that."

Akane frowned at her. "And I suppose you've already done just what you wanted, and you don't want anyone else taking a turn with the electric mixer?"

Nabiki rolled her eyes. "May I please remind you that now is not the time to discuss this?" She jerked her head toward the kitchen, using the gesture to ensure that Nodoka was still well out of earshot. "Yes, I deliberately met her and told her Ranma was here and she could finally meet him today. Yes, I also gave her plenty of details about her son's life over the last year, exercising a certain... shall we say, discretion as to what I told her. Ranma and his dad did a wonderful job digging their own graves with Auntie Saotome, and I've worked very hard to undo the worst of that. And unless you want to screw up everything I've worked for, I suggest you just sit back, smile nicely, and let Ranma tell her the stuff I told him to." With that, Nabiki turned back to regard her manga once more. The set and rigidity of her posture made one thing clear: as far as she was concerned, this conversation was over.

Akane, meanwhile, was gaping at her older sister. _'Let Ranma... the stuff she told him to say?'_ Her mouth went from a gape to a bitter grimace. _'So he didn't even bother to tell me he was planning this? Working everything out with Nabiki so that he could finally see his mother again for real? I wanted to see that too, I wanted to help them get back together. Guess that doesn't matter to that jerk, though, guess he doesn't think my help would be worth anything at all.'_

The thought was painful, not as bad as his declaration that she'd always be second best to Shampoo, but bad enough. _'Fine, Ranma. If you don't want me to get involved, I'll keep as far away as...'_ Akane's mental monologue trailed off as a new thought struck her. The idea that had been slinking around the back of her mind ever since Nodoka arrived had finally moved into full view. '_That's how it's going to be anyway, isn't it? Mrs. Saotome has her own home. Now that the Saotomes are going to be back together, won't that mean they'll all be living there?'_

The pain was only getting worse with each successive thought. Akane clenched her eyes shut, drew her knees up to her chest and buried her face in them, and tried to shut her mind down. It refused to comply, though, summoning a cascade of phantom images of her home, her life, empty of two people who'd become such a great part of it, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse, but undeniably important to her. And now Ranma was finally walking away without a backward glance, taking his father with him... she wouldn't even be able to learn all the things Genma had promised he'd teach her, she would lose the one trainer who had told her she could be more than she currently was...

Akane's eyes flew open again, as shock from a new surmise shoved the pain off to one side. _'Mr. Saotome... but that's... how could...?'_

"Sis? You really need to pull yourself together here," Nabiki advised, eyes wider than normal and her manga lying forgotten to one side. "What's wrong with you, anyway? You look like you swallowed a sea urchin... and I _don't_ mean one that's been cleaned and cooked first. Might I point out that if you go in to dinner with red eyes and blotched cheeks, it's going to lead to some awfully awkward questions from Mrs. Saotome?"

"That's a good point, Nabiki," Akane shot back. "We wouldn't want any awkward questions from her, now would we? So what do you think's gonna happen when Mr. Saotome gets back tonight and gets splashed in the first thirty minutes of saying hello to Auntie?"

Nabiki shrugged. "Seeing as how he'll already be wearing waterproof soap at that point, and there's enough soap to keep him protected until his real cure gets in, I don't think it's much of an issue." The earliest possible date for the arrival of the Nyannichuan had already passed. Nabiki was certain that either the water would get in before the current supply of soap ran out, or the additional bars she'd placed a rush order for would arrive. She wasn't quite sure which possibility she preferred—if the soap came first, she'd be able to charge Genma for it, but that would ultimately leave Ranma with more of the stuff, more safeguards against his new curse causing him the kind of trouble he deserved. If it was the water that won the race she'd take a financial hit over the soap, but Ranma would never catch so much as a glimpse of it.

That answer had washed away Akane's earlier shock. She might have known the answer would be something like that. "Oh. I guess you and Ranma've got this all figured out, huh?"

The middle Tendo's reaction to this suggested that if she'd been drinking, she would have done the greatest spit-take in the history of the universe. "Me... _and Ranma?_ Little sister, I thought I made it clear that the situation we're in right now requires careful thought and delicate handling. You honestly think Ranma had any part in that?"

Akane's brow wrinkled in puzzlement. "So... what? You're saying you did all this, all on your own?" When her sister gave an impatient nod, she continued, "Why, Nabiki?"

Nabiki shot another guarded glance toward the kitchen, reassuring herself once more that Nodoka was still tied up and oblivious to the conversation that really shouldn't have been happening here and now. She turned back to face Akane, leaning conspiratorially forward and motioning for her sister to come closer. Akane did so, getting up from the cushion and scooting over to a mere arm's length away. Nabiki dropped her voice to a dramatic whisper and stated, "Now that... is a secret!"

The youngest Tendo crashed to the ground in the most profound facefault she'd executed in a month. She had barely managed to get back to her hands and knees by the time Nodoka had appeared in the doorway, anxiously searching for the source of the noise. "Oh dear, Akane, are you all right?"

"F- Fine, Auntie Saotome," Akane managed to reply. "Just lost my balance."

Nodoka fussed over her for a few more moments before returning to the kitchen. "I trust I made my point," Nabiki murmured dryly. "_Later_, Akane. This isn't the time or the place for this discussion."

"Fine," Akane grumped as she retreated to her original seat. She clamped her lips shut against the desire to fire off more questions, determining to consider all angles of this in the privacy of her own mind and be ready when Nabiki deigned to open up.

She very quickly came back to one that had already occurred to her, the pain returning as the last of her distraction left her. Surely Mrs. Saotome's reappearance meant that this time when she left the Tendo home, her son and husband would go with her. Didn't Nabiki realize that? Didn't she care at all? Maybe the Saotomes would stay for the next few days; she supposed there wasn't much chance of them leaving before Genma got his hands on his cure. But like Nabiki herself had said, that would only be a little delay. Her sister had arranged all this, gone to such lengths on her own initiative, and for what? Why would she...

Akane gasped, a soft sound that Nabiki heard but chose to ignore. Had she looked up, she would have seen her sister staring wide-eyed at her with no color left in her face. _'I don't believe it,'_ Akane thought numbly, though that wasn't true at all—she merely wished it were. _'Of course Nabiki had to know what was going to happen. It's what she wants! It's got to be! She knows that Ranma's too stupid and stubborn to give up his new curse, and she also knows what that means.'_ In a nutshell, it meant that he couldn't be counted on to win his fights any more, not even the rematch he was sure to demand after a loss. In Nabiki's eyes, that had to make him worth much less as an asset.

The farther she traveled on this train of thought, the more sense it made. There were a lot of ways that Ranma had fallen woefully short of dependability in the past, but everyone had always been able to count on him to come through in a fight. In that arena, at least, he never lost or screwed up when it really counted. That wasn't, couldn't be true any longer, though... and all the negative aspects of having Ranma Saotome as a houseguest were still firmly in place. Shampoo's poisoned gift hadn't changed any of that. To a mercenary like her sister, Akane could imagine all too well that the most logical course of action would be to cut her losses and the Saotomes loose. She'd even found the perfect way to do it, a way that would leave Ranma owing her a huge favor. Akane bitterly wondered how Nabiki would collect, what avenue of repayment her sister would find that Ranma's new curse didn't interfere with.

As the thought of what was to come began to really sink in, bitterness was replaced by rising panic. She didn't want this to happen! She couldn't let it happen! Ranma and his father couldn't just walk away, not now, not like this! Not... not when she hadn't...

_'Not when I've still got so much to learn from Mr. Saotome!'_ Akane decided, seizing upon the inspiration. _'He promised to teach me real Anything Goes. It's a matter of honor, of family honor since these are our family styles! Mrs. Saotome will accept that, we all know how important honor is to her. If I just tell her that when she tries to drag Ranma and Mr. Saotome away, she'll have to agree and let them stay after all... I hope...'_ She took several deep breaths and began reassuring herself of the certainty of this, thinking back to what she'd seen of Nodoka before now. If the woman had been so lonely for so long, then she shouldn't think it would be such a terrible hardship to stay here with her son and husband, rather than taking them with her back to her own house. _'It's not going to happen. I won't let it happen. Nabiki can just live with disappointment,'_ she thought fiercely, firing another glare over toward her sibling.

The middle Tendo didn't look up from her manga, but she sensed her sister's displeasure nonetheless. _'What on earth has got Akane's panties in a twist now? Ranma was handed to her on a silver platter, and she was still managing to lose him. You'd almost think she realized that I got Mrs. Saotome here to make up for her own incompetence and that was what was pissing her off.'_ She turned a page, not bothering to focus on the story told in ink on paper, too busy pondering a different tale that would soon be told. _'Not that I can tell her that, of course. Let's see, what's the best yarn to spin for my dear, clueless baby sister?'_

-----------------------

Kasumi looked on in silent wonder as Nodoka began on her next dish. The two of them had started out by sharing the work more or less equally, Kasumi with a scaled-back version of the menu she had already planned for the night, Nodoka preparing a couple of dishes that were particular favorites of Genma's. Kasumi had thought at the time that their combined efforts weren't really going to be adequate to the kind of celebration that this ought to be, but she was too kind to say so.

As it turned out, though, those were just the opening strains of an anthem, the first few shots fired in a war. Nodoka had finished the sukiyaki and takoyaki and kept right on going. By now the Tendo kitchen was nearly filled with various dishes kept either warm or cool, all of them waiting for the menfolk to return and find themselves facing the biggest feast the Tendo home had ever seen. At least now the eldest Tendo daughter understood why Nabiki and Nodoka had been lugging all those groceries with them when they arrived earlier today.

Those hadn't quite been used up yet, but Kasumi still felt that it might be a good idea to call a halt. "Oh my, Mrs. Saotome. Everything looks wonderful... but don't you think we have enough now?"

"Mmmm..." Nodoka murmured, staring around the kitchen with speculative gaze. "I don't know, Kasumi dear. Doesn't Ranma have the same hearty appetite as his father? Genma dearest told me that's an inherited trait in his family." No matter how many years should pass, Nodoka would never forget the first real meal she'd prepared for her husband, and the mistaken certainty she'd felt that he must be using some kind of martial arts trick to dispose of the food when she wasn't looking. But she had learned otherwise, and had quickly come to enjoy the challenge of cooking for someone who appreciated her effort as much as Genma did, and could eat so much of it in one sitting. "I want there to be leftovers, even if it's only a single plateful." Leftovers meant she was the victor, rather than Genma. Nodoka wasn't, couldn't be, sure that she was ready to take on the combined might of both her husband and her son, but she was certainly going to try her best!

It was Kasumi's turn for speculation, taking into account the fact that Genma, at least, always ate more when he was nervous. "Well, perhaps a few dozen more spring rolls wouldn't hurt," she allowed.

"Spring rolls it is, then," Nodoka agreed, turning toward the severely-reduced cache of ingredients. "What sort would you say my son likes the most, Kasumi? Vegetarian? Chicken? Beef?"

"Hmmm... I can't think of a time he's ever shown a preference," Kasumi replied. At least, not at speeds her eyes could follow. "Really, Mrs. Saotome, he'll think whatever you pick is wonderful. There are some dishes Ranma particularly likes, but any meal prepared for him with love and gentle care is something he'll be truly thankful for."

"I... yes, that's what I want..." Nodoka said, the words emerging not much louder than a whisper as she looked around the kitchen and the feast it was straining to contain. "I realized that while I was talking to your sister this afternoon. I just want to do everything I can to make this meeting go perfectly. I want to show them how much I love them, how much I've missed them, and this, this is the best way I can think of..."

Kasumi gave her most cheerful smile. "Well, it might have been a while since you've seen them, but you certainly haven't forgotten how to bring a smile to their faces. They'll love this, Mrs. Saotome. Both Ranma and Mr. Saotome will."

"I'm sure you're right, dear." Nodoka dabbed at the corners of her eyes with her apron. "I just want this dinner to be the best it can be. It's been so long, so terribly long since I've seen my husband and son... I don't even know what Ranma looks like, though I'm sure I'll know him when I see him!"

"I could go fetch a picture of him for you," Kasumi offered, remembering something Akane had told her about Nodoka's first visit.

"No, Kasumi. Thank you, but no. I want the first time I see him to really be my son, right there before me in the flesh where I can hug him and tell him I never want to lose him again."

_'Oh well, it's not like there'll be any other teenaged boys wandering into our home tonight for her to mistake for Ranma,'_ Kasumi mused. Fortunately for everyone involved, she was the only Tendo with enough positive karma not to bring down disaster by thinking something like that.

"I'll know him when I see him. I'm sure of it," Nodoka repeated. Then, her voice sinking down toward a whisper again, she continued, "But... but do you think he'll know who I am?"

To Kasumi's credit, neither her smile nor her eye twitched as she replied, "Oh, yes, Mrs. Saotome! I'm quite sure of that!"

Nodoka smiled herself, relieved by the absolute certainty she could hear in the younger woman's words. "Thank you very much, dear. I hope you're right. How much longer do you think he'll be gone? Have you any idea?" She had already asked about her husband, but Kasumi could only guess that he'd be back in time for supper, as she hadn't known where Genma and Soun had vanished off to. Nodoka hoped that they might be patrolling the streets in an effort to uphold decency and dignity; even in her isolated, lonely life she had heard rumors of how active the panty-thieves of Nerima were. Probably if Genma and Ranma hadn't taken so many training trips away from the Tendos, they would already have solved the problem! It was definitely something worth mentioning to her son somewhere down the line. After all, she already knew he was special, Nabiki had drawn a broad enough picture of Ranma to assure Nodoka of that, but there was always room for growth, improvement, and more thankful female admirers!

"It probably won't be much longer," Kasumi said. His latest flight had so far kept him away for four hours, which was longer than usual even when considering that those jaunts had been increasing in length over time. Kasumi had even started to become a little bit concerned by that fact, but his mother's appearance today had laid those worries to rest. Ranma would undoubtedly still take to the skies from time to time, but now he had even more reason to come back swiftly. Then the eldest Tendo daughter blinked, as her attunement to the household wa revealed something to her. "In fact—"

"I'm home!" The cry was unmistakably that of a teenaged male, and it acted on Nodoka as would the starter's pistol at the hundred-meter dash. The Saotome matron hurried from the kitchen at her best speed, constrained by her kimono but still moving at quite a respectable clip. By the time she reached the entranceway he had only had time to step out of his shoes. Both Nodoka and the newly-arrived young man froze, each staring at the other, both visibly nervous as they drank in every detail of the person staring at them across those few feet of space.

He was handsome enough to be a man among men-among-men, was Nodoka's first thought. This young man stood just the right height, not undersized by any means, but not freakishly tall either. He had the perfect fighter's build as well, or at least what she thought she remembered Genma describing as the perfect fighter's build—not too bulky, not too thin, his muscles toned for equal grace and power. His hair was as black as his father's, and his eyes were a deep, beautiful blue. In fact, one tiny corner of Nodoka's mind noted, even as the rest focused on propelling her across the space to hug her manly son, he looked awfully familiar.

"Oh, Ranma my son, it's so good to see you!" she exclaimed without even realizing she'd done so, her voice throbbing with emotion and sorely-tested self-control, her arms tightening around him with all the force of her years of loneliness and pent-up motherly instincts.

_'Shouldn't he be turning blue right about now?'_ Nabiki wondered. She had wandered over to view the proceedings, as well as be in a position to step in if Ranma looked like blowing his lines. _'A hug that fierce... oh, wait, this is the guy who's survived the best squeezes Shampoo can throw at him. Never mind.'_

"M- Mom?" The words were spoken softly and hesitantly, the embrace returned much more carefully than it was offered, but they were enough to move Nodoka past that first extremity of emotion, going from mingled joy and sorrow to pure joy. He had remembered her! He had recognized her! Her only child, lost to her for so long, had still known her right away! Her arms tightened yet again, actually managing to approach the point where Ranma might almost have felt some slight physical discomfort. Then, heaving a long, happy sigh, she loosened her grip and stepped slightly back. She kept her hands on his shoulders, unwilling to fully relinquish contact just yet, but needing to get a longer and better look at him.

"It, it really is you, isn't it?" he continued. Nodoka and Nabiki both felt sharp pangs at the words, so halting and awkward. Nodoka because they reminded her again of how long her son had been waiting for her, how long she had been waiting for him. Nabiki merely noted that even the critical need to make a good first impression, which she had carefully spelled out to him on the note left with Junko, had apparently not sharpened Ranma's acting skills. Fortunately his mother seemed about as observant of such nuances as Ranma himself.

"Yes, my son. It really is." Nodoka blinked away a tear, and smiled tremulously at him. "Oh, Ranma, you look just like I imagined you would! So strong and handsome, such a wonderful son for me to be proud of... so..." she blinked, as the thought percolating at the back of her mind finally managed to rise to the fore, "so familiar." She scrutinized him more closely, comparing each detail of his appearance against a memory she'd cherished for months now. "Yes... yes! It really was you I saw that time!"

"What time was that, Auntie Saotome?" Nabiki asked smoothly, cutting into the conversation while mentally promising Ranma much pain for never revealing whatever this was to her. "You say you've seen him somewhere before? It wouldn't be terribly surprising; your son has taken down a lot of strong fighters over the last year. I think a few of his matches have even found their way into the media." Of course those had been the matches that resulted in truly exorbitant levels of property damage, and the 'media' in question had been the local news, but she didn't see any need to go into that much detail.

"Oh, no, Nabiki, that's not it," Nodoka assured her. "It happened when I was going home after an earlier visit, when your sister tried to arrange a meeting for me with Ranma. The cap over a hot spring burst, I believe; in any case, I was thrown high into the air by a waterspout. As I was passing out, I caught sight of a blurred figure leaping in to save me through the curtain of hot water, a wonderful, heroic, strong, handsome young man that I was certain was my son! I lost consciousness then, and when I woke up again we were safely on the ground and I realized it was only your cousin Ranko who had saved me." She sighed for a moment, feeling an echo of the remembered disappointment. Then, brightening again as she returned to the present, she continued, "But I was right the first time! Well, not that it was my son rescuing me, but it was him that the Kami allowed me to see!"

_'It's almost too easy,' _Nabiki thought, smiling outwardly and smirking on the inside. _'She's so ready and willing to believe good stuff about him, not to mention desperate, that I just have to keep anything from hitting her head-on that's too big for her to deal with. Saotome, your feathered butt is as good as chained down.'_

"Y- you were in danger, Mom?" Ranma asked, rejoining the conversation. "I... I wish I coulda been the one to rescue you. To catch you an' keep you safe."

"Well, perhaps you'll have a chance to again, dear," Nodoka reassured him. "During the time Genma and I were getting to know one another, there were several of his rivals who tried to get to him by kidnapping me. Sometimes they even took my little sister and brother too. If Mother and Father had still been alive, I'm sure Genma dearest would have had at least a few chances to show them how wonderful he was by rescuing them from a hostage crisis."

None of the listeners quite knew how to respond to that, not Ranma, not Nabiki, not Akane who'd come to see what was taking so long. _'Is she serious?' _Nabiki wondered. _'Is that possible? Did Mr. Saotome really have anything remotely like the life Ranma's living right now?' _She mused on this for awhile, even going so far as to ignore the conversation as it started up again between the other three. _'If he really faced challenges like that, and even triumphed over them, how could he have turned out like he is today?'_ As far as Nabiki could tell, the man was a lazy, greedy, unprincipled sloth-in-panda's-clothing who only ever cared about a few things. True, he was prepared to go to great lengths in pursuit of those things, such as training and guiding his son. True, he put more honest effort into parenting than Nabiki could remember seeing from her own father (even if Genma was just as apt as Soun to let the younger generation clean up his own mess). True, the damage he did seemed to come primarily from boneheadedness rather than apathy or malevolence. But all that was faint praise indeed for someone who'd lived the kind of youth that Nodoka seemed to be indicating. What had happened?

One quiet corner of her soul submitted the hypothesis that perhaps he'd married someone who loved him, but didn't know how to help him grow past the flaws of youth. The rest of Nabiki promptly ignored it.

-----------------------

"Remind me again whose idea this was," Genma growled. He was tired, hungry, frustrated, angry, disappointed, and worst of all, stone cold sober.

"Well, Saotome, if memory serves, after I picked it up and you ambled over to see what had grabbed my attention so hard, we each stared at this... unfortunate document," Soun paused for a few seconds to relieve his own feelings, generating a Demon Head that howled and screamed at the paper still clutched in his hand, "for who knows how long. Eventually you said, 'Are you thinking what I'm thinking?' And I was."

"Right," Genma replied. "And are you thinking what I'm thinking _now_?"

"That if we ever find out whose sick, twisted idea of a joke this was, we feed them to the Master?"

"Absolutely. It's got to be some new rival out to challenge my boy," the elder Saotome declared. "I've never seen anyone with such a talent as Ranma for calling trouble down on himself and every poor, innocent, unfortunate soul who dares to get close to him."

Soun couldn't quite stifle the 'like father, like son' comment that rose to his lips, but he was able to turn it into a loud cough. "Er, well, perhaps, Saotome. But your son doesn't drink. Why would a rival try to lure him away to a nonexistent bar? Surely that wouldn't appeal to him no matter how good the so-called promotional prices were?"

"Which is why I said _new_ rival," Genma riposted. "Someone who hasn't been around long enough to learn better. Someone who just went with the first plan that popped into his head." He patted the pockets of his gi, searching for something. "Need a cough drop, Tendo?"

"Yes, thanks." Soun popped the pastille and sucked moodily on it. "I suppose you could be right, but somehow I'm not convinced."

"Well, what do you think is the explanation, then?"

Soun blinked. "That's a good question." He pondered it for the next few moments, at which point the lingering anger disappeared from his face, along with the majority of his composure. "It could have been the Master himself," he uttered in a hushed whisper.

"I like my idea better," Genma said flatly.

"Well, so do I, Saotome, but think about it! He disappears from time to time, but he doesn't usually stay gone this long. We've been living on borrowed time these past two weeks and you know it. Something like this would probably seem like a fine joke to him."

Genma shook his head forcefully. "I don't think so. If it really were the Master, he would've taken it even further. He wouldn't have left that flyer in the yard for you to find as if the wind had blown it there, he would've showed up in the flesh and handed it to you, and told us to go to that bar and buy him a few dozen bottles of sake." He glared at the paper. "Not much of a burden at the prices listed there. But after we spent the afternoon and early evening trying to track down the place, only to discover that it never existed at all, we would still have to go somewhere else and buy his sake at the full price. _That's_ the Master's idea of a good joke."

"Hmmm... you know, I think you're right," Soun allowed after mulling it over for awhile. He then eyed his oldest friend askance. "It's a little disturbing to see how well you understand the Master's mindset, Saotome."

"In the interests of our long friendship I'll overlook that remark," Genma snapped, making a mental note to use something really horrible for his next shogi distraction ploy. Maybe Nabiki selling Kasumi to the Yakuza.

The two walked in silence for a while. "Are you sure you want to head back now?" Genma eventually asked, breaking the silence that had stretched over the last four blocks. He gestured ahead and to the right, where a much narrower street crossed the path they were taking back home. "If we turn here it'll take us into the back alleys, and sooner or later some dumb punks are bound to try and mug us. We could work out a few frustrations and liberate enough yen to pay our way at a regular bar."

This wasn't the first time Genma had made such a suggestion. Usually Soun shot them down quickly and unequivocally, pointing out in no uncertain terms that he, and by extension his houseguest, had an image to keep up with the upper-class of Nerima. Today, it was much more difficult to resist the temptation. After a silent minute, though, he replied, "No, Saotome. Let's just go home. I'm sure Kasumi's dinner will be enough to put smiles back on our faces."

Genma grumbled but acquiesced. _'If I'm still feeling like a little excitement, I can just spar with the boy. He'd better be home, not off gallivanting through the skies as if he didn't have a thing in the world to worry about. At the very least he'd better have stuck around long enough to pass my message on to Kasumi, about where Soun and I were going...'_ He blinked as he followed that train of thought to its logical conclusion. _'Wait a minute... if he did that, Kasumi would think we weren't going to be back for dinner at all!'_ Stopping dead in his tracks, he scanned the skies, searching desperately for the sight of a blue-and-black falcon soaring overhead. Nothing to be seen, and even if there had been it wouldn't prove anything, he remembered. "You're absolutely right, Tendo! Let's pick up the pace!"

Soun blinked, at first in surprise, then to clear his eyes of the dust cloud raised by his friend's departure.

-----------------------

Tatsuki checked his watch. He grimaced at the result; he'd been out here for three hours now, with no end in sight. Afternoon had shifted into evening, dusk was edging on toward full night, and regardless of whatever arrangements Nabiki might have made with the other students sharing this vigil, she certainly wasn't paying _him _by the hour. He stared away down the street for a few moments more, straining his eyes for any hint of an approaching burly figure in a white gi, or an oversized panda walking erect. Neither version of Genma Saotome was anywhere in sight. He turned and looked the other way, regarding what would be Genma's destination, the area he and his fellow Furinkan freshmen had to keep the elder Saotome from entering unprepared.

According to his world history class, European gaijins had once been fond of putting 'Here be dragons' on the unexplored places on their maps. In Tatsuki's opinion, any map of Nerima should include something similar blazoned over the Tendo dojo. Except it wouldn't say 'dragons'. 'Pains in the neck', maybe, or perhaps 'weirdness made flesh, blood, and bone'. 'Way too much concentrated power'—he'd support that legend in a heartbeat. He'd worked hard all his life to become a strong martial artist, he'd even been happy to go to Furinkan since he'd heard the tales of strong combatants there, and it had earned him nothing but the chance to possibly be the strongest person outside of Ranma Saotome's social circle. Ranma himself was so far ahead of Tatsuki that the only way he could possibly hope to scrape a win would be exploiting the upperclassman's curse.

And even if one ignored the super martial artists, there was still Nabiki. This close to her house he didn't feel safe enough even to _think_ his opinion of her.

Tearing his eyes from the Tendo home, and pushing away a fantasy wherein it—and all that it represented in Nerima—were nothing more than a bad dream, Tatsuki turned once again and scanned the streets for Genma. Still no sign of the elder Saotome. He glanced to the nearest rooftop. If he jumped up there, he would have a better view, and maybe company too if Nabiki had posted someone at that vantage point. There was only one problem: he couldn't make a jump like that, going either up from the street or back down to it. Infuriating, especially considering some of the casual leaps he'd seen Ranma make. Even Akane Tendo could manage a one-story jump from what Tatsuki had heard, which was all the more frustrating since he believed he might be able to beat her in a fight if he used a careful hit-and-run strategy.

A thought which led him straight back to brooding over the ridiculously skewed power levels in this district. Another thirty minutes passed this way, at the end of which Tatsuki was a seething morass of resentment and baffled fury. Maybe it would be worth it, he couldn't help but think, if he were to challenge and take down Akane. Ranma would squash him afterwards if a tenth of what he'd heard in the rumor-mill was true, but a victory like that, over an Anything Goes student who certainly outstripped him in a few important areas, might be sweet enough to make up for it.

Further thoughts on the matter were tabled as he finally noticed the approach of his target, illuminated by a helpful street-light. Genma had just dashed out from a side alley five blocks down and was now barreling along the final straightaway toward the Tendo home. He was in panda form, going on all fours for better speed, and didn't seem discomfited in the least by the weight of Soun Tendo, clinging frantically to Genma's back as his long hair snapped and crackled in the wind. Tatsuki smiled grimly. Genma was clearly in no mood to be stopped, but Nabiki's instructions had been perfectly clear. This once, at least, he found himself genuinely happy to obey her.

Soun, meanwhile, was teetering somewhere on the edge of hysteria. He still didn't know for certain why his old friend had suddenly become so frantic to get home; just as his own sprint had caught him up to Genma, a splash of water from nowhere had destroyed any chance for his friend to answer questions without stopping and scribbling on a sign. It quickly became clear that Genma had no intention of doing that. Soun had paced him for awhile, running in silence as he tried to determine what had lit such a fire under his oldest friend.

When inspiration struck, it had been even more horrible than his first hypothesis concerning the fraudulent flyer. Perhaps the two of them had been lured away from home to leave his precious girls alone and defenseless! If Ranma were to take advantage of his and Genma's absence to soar away for a few hours, it would be a perfect opportunity for some ruthless vagabond to kidnap one or more of his beloved daughters! Shock and horror had frozen Soun when this insight hit him, at which point Genma doubled back, slung him over his furry shoulders, and raced off at top speed. After that Soun just tried to hang on and pray that they'd be in time to save his family.

By the time the two Masters of Anything Goes reached the final stretch of road leading home, Soun was in no condition to notice a random student loitering in the lane one block ahead of his house... at least not until the boy twisted in a fast spin kick perfectly timed to knock Genma off his feet and transform his charge into a tumbling slam into a nearby property wall. Good luck alone threw Soun clear. He landed with his own painful thudding roll, but it was nowhere near as damaging as getting pinned under Genma would have been.

Tatsuki smirked, enjoying the satisfaction of a move executed perfectly. He'd never seen Ranma's father in action, but was certain the man could take him apart in an even match. However, catching him by surprise had been all the edge Tatsuki needed to take him down. Time now to flag one of the students on the rooftops and let them be the one to pass Nabiki's message along to Genma. As for Tatsuki, he had better get while the getting was good—

"YOU WILL NEVER HARM MY PRECIOUS BABY GIRLS!" It was a good thing that the apparent earsplitting volume of Soun's Demon Head was just another chi trick. Had he really screamed the message as loudly as it seemed to the hapless Tatsuki, caught in the grip of an enraged none-too-stable parent and helpless beneath the phantasmagorical tirade, Nodoka would surely have sent her manly son outside to deal with the threat and followed to watch. As it was, though, only Tatsuki, a handful of nearby student sentries, and the quickly-recovering Genma heard Soun's righteous declaration. The last coherent thought Tatsuki managed, before falling thankfully unconscious, was an ironclad decision to leave Akane Tendo the hell alone.

Genma got back to his feet with a series of grumbling gruffles, rubbing his head and glaring at his crumpled assailant. _'Think you're a martial artist, do you boy? Just wait until I sign you up as the Master's next disciple.'_ A loud growl from his stomach cleared the last cobwebs from his head and reminded him that there were more important things to worry about.

"Um... Mr. Saotome?" Both men jumped, stared around, then looked up. A girl's face was visible through the darkness, peering uncertainly down at them. "Ah... you really don't want to go in there like that." She watched the panda scribble something on a sign and hold it up, too bemused to read the message even if there had been enough light to do so. "I can't read that," she said apologetically. "Anyway, I needed to tell you that Ranma's mother is in there."

Quick as lighting Genma dropped from his upright stance, rolling onto his back and spinning the sign. It now presented the message 'I'm just a cute and cuddly panda.'

"I can't read that one either," the nameless girl called down. "Anyway, she's already met with Ranma and heard a lot of stuff from him." She winced as the panda below her suddenly gave a groaning wheeze and clutched at its chest with one clawed paw. Hopefully the man wouldn't perforate himself and bleed to death before the Saotome family could reunite. "Everyone knows to keep quiet about your curse, but that means you need to keep it hidden until you can cure it for good." She paused to take a breath. Before she could continue on to the message about the soap, waiting with Manami just outside the Tendo home, Genma was gone.

-----------------------

The front door of the Cat Café slammed open. A heartbeat later Genma zipped through, once more in human form and paying no heed to the fact that the door had been locked prior to his entry. Another heartbeat, and a bonborri bounced painfully off his skull. At another time he would at least have reacted, but here and now he didn't even pause, merely continued his charge past Shampoo, through the dining room, and into the kitchen. Only then, as the utter lack of Cologne registered, did he stop dead in dismay.

"I suppose I could bill you for repairs to my front door." Cologne's dry voice from behind him sent Genma whirling around, hope renewed. "But considering my great-granddaughter's methods of entry at the Tendo home, perhaps it's better to let it slide."

"Right, yes, thanks. The water!" Genma exclaimed, lunging toward Cologne and dropping into the Crouch of the Wild Tiger. "Is it here yet? Please tell me it is!"

Cologne stared inscrutably back at him. "Why is it such an urgent matter now, Genma? The last I heard, you wouldn't really be needing it for another few months."

He gave a bitter laugh. "That was the plan, but it must have slipped up somewhere. Right this very minute my wife is waiting for me at Tendo's place. She's already met with Ranma and talked to him." He ignored both Shampoo's soft gasp of surprise and the girl's wide-eyed face appearing in the window that connected the kitchen and dining room. "I can't afford to wait any longer. If the water's not here yet, do you at least have something that'll do for a temporary fix?"

"Actually, you're in luck," Cologne replied after a long pause, the wheels of her mind spinning as she considered this new development, "the Nannichuan arrived just this morning." It was her turn to ignore Shampoo, as the young Amazon started then fixed her with a reproachful look. She hadn't informed the lavender-haired girl of this because Ranma had already been scheduled to spend time with her today; Cologne had thought to give her youngest descendent another opportunity tomorrow to seek out her beloved and share the news with him.

"It did? Wonderful! Let's go!"

"Not so fast," the Matriarch replied. "There are a few things we need to settle first."

Genma swallowed, trying to fight a sudden feeling of dread. He cursed the fate that had brought him here in such dire, immediate need of the cure. "And what would that be?"

"Payment," Cologne returned. "I'm not going to ask for much; Shampoo agreed to this in the first place because she wanted to help your son. But I've had to put forth a certain amount of effort of my own, and I'd like to see some compensation."

"What kind of compensation?"

"Like I said, nothing much." Cologne gave him as nonthreatening a smile as her features would allow. "I simply want to talk to you about your wife, find out what kind of woman she is, the history you two have together, that sort of thing."

Alarm had given way to confusion. "Why would you care about any of that?"

The Matriarch stared back at him. Quietly, but with the underlying firmness of the entire Bayankhala mountain range, she replied, "Whether or not you like it or accept it, by our laws Shampoo is Ranma's wife. That makes your wife her mother-in-law. Surely you can see that it's only natural to want to know about her."

Genma grimaced as if he'd eaten a particularly bitter early persimmon, but didn't say anything in reply.

"And it's for your own good too," Cologne continued in a more affable tone. "For one thing, I'll throw in a 'Saotome Special' order of ramen, on the house." She let Genma salivate for a few moments, then said, "And far more importantly... how long has it been since you sat down and thought about her? I mean everything, not just the good times or the things you're most afraid of." The Matriarch paused for a few moments more to let that sink in, then continued, "You're planning to go back to her tonight for good and all... don't you think it would be helpful to remember everything you can about her, to prepare for that reunion? Talking to me about this ought to do just that. Of course she won't be exactly the same person as she was when you left, but better that you remember who she was so that you can understand who she is now."

"And she probably would be happier if I remembered all those niggling little things," Genma mused. That was something he reckoned was common to every woman that had ever been born. Certainly he'd never encountered one for whom it wasn't true. He didn't think for a moment that something like that would make or break the judgment call Nodoka was going to be making regarding him, Ranma, and the boy's manliness, but he also didn't want to hurt his wife if it could be avoided. "Fine, you've got yourself a deal. But can we use the Nannichuan first?"

"No," Cologne said flatly. "Think of that as incentive to remember more."

"All right, all right," he grumbled. "Can I at least have a chair to sit in?"

"No," Cologne said, just as flatly as before.

"What! Why not?"

"Our chairs are needed here. You may borrow one, certainly, but we're not giving any away."

Genma and Shampoo both rolled their eyes. "Great-Grandmother, that was terrible joke," the girl complained.

"Perhaps so, but it still broke the tension," the Matriarch shot back. "I felt that we could use a little humor before Genma and I get back into the heavy, serious conversation."

"Genma and you?" Shampoo sighed. "That is you way of saying, 'Shampoo, time be seen not heard'. Yes?"

"No. It's my way of saying I want you to head to the roof and train, rather than listening in on us." Cologne paused just long enough for Shampoo's mouth to drop open in shocked outrage, then switched to Mandarin and continued, " If he tells me anything that you or your husband need to know right away, rest assured I'll pass it on. But you should learn from Son-in-law himself about who his mother is. "

Genma watched as Shampoo's mouth clicked closed, followed by her head inclining toward Cologne in a quick half-bow. With no further ado, the girl disappeared up the stairs. "Any chance you could tell me what you said to her to get such quick, dutiful obedience?" he asked, only half joking.

"Hoping to get the same results with Ranma, are you?" Cologne let out a cackle. "You're about fifteen years too late for that."

-----------------------

Afternoon sunlight streamed through Akane's open window, along with a fitful breeze. It guttered, gusted, and swirled, catching dust motes and sending them on a wild, tumultuous course of loops and spins, now visible in the light beaming through the window, now fading to nothingness as they were carried out of its path. If Akane had noticed, she might have compared them to her own state of mind.

She certainly hadn't caught her balance yet. Nodoka's arrival the previous day had changed so many things, some for the short term, others presumably for good. Akane didn't know what to think about so much of it, especially the fact that she'd been completely wrong about her sister's motivations. _'At least I didn't throw that in Nabiki's face,'_ she thought. _'I'm glad I figured that much out first.'_ Easy enough to figure out, when Nabiki had been as vocal as everyone, and more eloquent than anyone, in arguing that Nodoka should join her husband and son as a guest of the Tendos. _'And I'm glad what I thought at first was wrong.'_

She wasn't quite so glad about some other things. For one, Genma had taken a break from training her due to having his wife in his life once more. Akane supposed she shouldn't complain, but that didn't make her happy to swallow these setbacks, didn't make it any more palatable to choke down a few days where Shampoo was free to widen the gap that Akane had been narrowing. Her sensei hadn't said anything specific about when he'd resume her training, but Akane had already decided that she'd give him today and tomorrow, which were the last full schooldays of the week, and perhaps Saturday morning as well. After that, he was going to be training her again whether he liked it or not!

Her spirits bolstered by these thoughts, Akane turned her mind to another unpleasant memory of the previous day. Since it had been decided that Nodoka would join the household as yet another semi-permanent guest, certain rearrangements had to be made—after all, the three Saotomes couldn't all sleep in the same room. Her father had been as quick as ever to try and shove Ranma into her room. Well, Akane might have let that happen when they were trying to get rid of Ukyo, but there was no way she was going to allow it under these circumstances! She'd stood up for herself with all the fire and determination she could muster, had looked her father in the eyes and shut him up in record time. None of that was particularly bad, but what had disturbed Akane was that this time Ranma hadn't backed her up, hadn't joined in the protest! He'd just stood there, silent, and let her do all the work! _'That perverted jerk probably thinks he's got a right to stay here now, after that stupid business with Ukyo moving in on us,'_ she thought darkly. _'He better not try anything now that he doesn't have Mr. Saotome in the same room to keep an eye on him.'_

Thoughts of Ranma led her back to the one thing entering through the window that she had noticed. The breeze might have slipped past her, the dust motes and sunlight gone unnoticed, but the sounds of Ranma practicing in the back yard had remained in the background of Akane's awareness ever since they'd begun. She stood up from her bed and walked over to the window, looking down at him.

He was moving at least as quickly and powerfully as ever. Akane couldn't be sure, but she thought she sensed an extra spring in his step, a subtle note of extra joy and excitement in his movements. Whether that was truth or just an illusion, the wide smile he was wearing made his emotions pretty apparent. Akane stared down, and a small answering smile appeared on her lips. _'Maybe he is a jerk, a pervert, and an idiot, but he's finally got his mother back. And she's just as happy about that as he is.'_

Something about the moment seemed familiar, something in the combination of those thoughts and Ranma's smile. She continued to watch him for a few moments as she grappled with the sensation, eventually running the memory to earth. Shortly after they learned of Nodoka, Akane had tried to arrange a meeting between son and mother. She'd given Ranma a flower to give to Nodoka; he'd taken it, thanked her, and then stood staring at her with a really goofy smile. Akane's danger sense had quickly been tripped, and she'd demanded to know what he was thinking and why he was looking at her like that. As far as she could tell, Ranma hadn't even noticed her warning stare or sharp tone. He'd still been smiling just as warmly and tenderly as he explained that he was thinking about his mother, how he really did have one. It had been a great relief to hear that, and she'd smiled back at him and encouraged him a little more.

_'Maybe it would be nice to talk to him like that again.'_ The thought slipped into the forefront of Akane's consciousness, worming its way past some truly impressive defenses in order to do so. She blinked and examined it, finding that perhaps there was something to it. She wasn't about to just forgive and forget his little speech about her skill relative to Shampoo's, but perhaps she could put those issues on the back burner for now. After all, the best time to get his apology would be after he'd watched her squash the Amazon, and Akane knew that was still at least two weeks away.

The youngest Tendo nodded firmly. Turning away from the window, she detoured by her closet and changed out of her school dress, then headed downstairs and out into the yard. She waited a few moments for Ranma to slow down from a particularly high-speed point in his exercise, then walked over and said, "Ranma? Can we talk?"

He blinked, and took a few seconds to answer. "What, you mean right now?"

"Well, yeah," Akane answered, unpleasantly surprised to find that the words weren't coming nearly as easily as they should. "I just... wanted to talk to you. About Auntie Saotome, I guess, and, and all this..."

"Huh." He shrugged. "Okay, Akane. Let's go to the dojo." He turned and began walking in that direction.

Akane followed automatically, but found her steps slowing almost immediately, eventually bringing her to a halt with less than half the distance covered. "Wait, Ranma. Why there?" she asked, even as he disappeared inside the building. Akane frowned, pushed away her inexplicable reluctance, and hurried through the door.

"Could ya close it behind you?" Ranma asked as soon as she was inside.

The question sounded innocent enough, but Akane felt a sudden renewed surge of reluctance to be here. "What for?" she asked, speaking more sharply than she'd intended.

The stare he fired back at her didn't help to improve her mood. "Uh, what do you think?" Ranma asked. "So we don't get overheard. That's kinda the whole point of coming out here, Akane."

"Who's going to overhear?" she protested.

This time he stared at her for several silent moments before replying. "That would be Mom. Did I not hear you right? I thought you wanted to talk about some stuff that she doesn't need to hear."

Akane frowned. She really just wanted to know what Ranma thought about all this and how he was feeling, but said, "I guess you're right." After all, maybe the conversation would go into territory that it was best Nodoka not listen to. She still wasn't crazy about having the discussion here, but maybe it was the best option. She closed the door as he'd asked then sat down against the wall, trying to push away memories of two days past, when Ranma had stood by that same wall and said his piece about her and Shampoo. "Um... how's everything?"

"Pretty good, I guess," he said as he sat down beside her. "It's real great to be able to spend time with Mom as myself, you know?" Almost before the words had finished escaping, his eyes were wide and he was wincing. "Um, sorry, I didn't mean to say it like that, didn't mean to remind you of your own mom."

Akane tried to keep the pain that shot through her from registering on her face. _'Idiot, you didn't remind me of her until that stupid apology.'_ Gritting her teeth against yet another thoughtless, hurtful remark from her fiancé, she said, "Never mind me, I wanted to know about you and your mother. I'm almost surprised you didn't skip school today to spend more time with her." It wasn't like he had paid any attention at all today; as far as Akane could tell, all he'd done in class was catch up on sleep.

"I asked her if she wanted me to, this morning when she woke me up. But she told me she didn't want me short-changing myself on my education like that." For a moment Ranma looked a little frustrated, then his smile reappeared, as wide and carefree as ever. "Oh well, we'll have plenty of time now."

Akane blinked, surprised to learn that it wasn't due to Genma or random chance that Ranma hadn't needed her to wake him up this morning. One more small but permanent change. "What do you think will be the next thing you tell her?"

"Kinda hard to say," Ranma mused. "Prob'ly it'd be a good idea for her to get a heads-up on all the jerks who like to challenge me. Maybe I'll see if I can track down Ryoga, have a match with him. That'd show Mom that I've got real strong rivals but they ain't quite as strong as me."

"You jerk, how about you track down Ryoga and tell him his Drowned Guy water is here!" Akane shot back. Ranma had passed along the news of his father's cure as they walked to school this morning. She supposed Genma must have slipped those facts to him sometime earlier in the morning, maybe while Akane was out jogging. Part of her wanted to cut the conversation short right now, and tell Ranma that if he wasn't going to spend this time with his mother, then he ought to be pounding the streets looking for the Lost Boy.

She didn't do it, since her rational mind knew that looking for Ryoga was almost always a waste of time, whereas waiting for him to show up produced surprisingly good results. Akane reminded herself that she'd wanted to spend this time with Ranma, wanted to talk about Nodoka and really understand everything that was going on there. She pushed aside thoughts of how her idiotic fiancé always picked on poor Ryoga, and shoved away memories of her long-ago training with the Lost Boy, when he'd tried so hard to teach her Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics. Ranma had just sat there and mocked the both of them, and still managed to learn the moves better than her in the process!

Akane shoved a little harder, eventually forcing those unpleasant memories out of her thoughts and leaving only a slightly increased reluctance to holding their discussion here. "Do you really think she cares that much about how strong you are?"

"Well, duh. Why else would she let Pop take me on the road for all those years?" he shot back. "Sure, that ain't all she wanted, but the whole point of a _training_ trip was to train me to be the best Anything Goes heir I can be."

"_Saotome_ Anything Goes heir, maybe," she returned. "Don't forget that this is the Tendo dojo, for Tendo Anything Goes."

"Yeah, yeah," Ranma waved a hand dismissively. "Like you'd even still have this place if it wasn't for me. Hey, Akane, you think you could tell those stories to Mom sometime? How I saved your butt with Natsume an' Kurumi, and how you needed me to win that fight with the Dojo Destroyer?"

She'd been clutching tighter and tighter to the memory of Ranma holding that flower she'd given him for his mother, but it was fast slipping through her fingers. By contrast other memories were rising to the fore, other times she and Ranma had spent in this place. At the front of the pack were the two that idiot had thrown in her face, the battles with the girls who'd thought they were her sisters, and with a man who'd scarcely even looked to be her same species. Following quickly on their heels came the recollections she'd already pushed away once, of the long-ago Rhythmic Gymnastics training.

Then, as if a door had been flung wide open, came still more memories of what had passed in this place between Ranma and herself. He broke her out of the Xi Fang Gao through sheer obnoxiousness... They talked about Happosai's illness and her father's resultant determination for a wedding, to ensure the future of Anything Goes. She could almost hear that discussion again, and how much she hadn't said... She bandaged his wounds after his fight with Mikado, teased him about letting a guy kiss him, and even taunted him a little about kissing her. He'd looked like he might, for a moment there, and then both teens had witnessed every other member of the Tendo household staring enthusiastically at them. The moment was shattered so thoroughly that Akane wondered sometimes, late at night when most of her usual barriers were down, if it could ever come again...

With all the strength she had left, she pushed enough of the tumult aside to say, "Ranma, I don't want to talk about that! Not any of it, not now, not here!"

"Huh?" He stared back at her with blank incomprehension, his typical cluelessness only making this harder. Why couldn't the idiot try to understand her, just once?

"I mean let's go! Let's get out of here, go for a walk or something." Akane grasped tight hold of the idea. Yes, that was perfect. They could get away from all the ghosts clamoring out of these walls, talk about things in an open, neutral area.

"I can't do that, Akane," he said, in such patient, reasonable tones that she wanted to smash him through the ceiling. "What if Mom wants to take a break from helpin' Kasumi get dinner ready and talk some more? No way, I'm gonna be here if she wants me."

"She isn't going to!" Akane could no longer keep her voice level. Still, she was feeling more bitterness than anger, a fact that she hated but couldn't seem to do anything about. That familiar, fiery rush that Ranma had provoked in her so many times was only a trickle now, barely moderating a current of much less pleasant feelings. "She's in the kitchen because she _wants_ to be, so that she can make a wonderful dinner for you and Mr. Saotome! She's not just gonna slack off from that so she can talk to you for a few minutes about nothing important!"

At this he frowned—no, the jerk actually _glared_ at her! "Maybe it's not important to you, Akane. An' maybe you're right that she won't step outta the kitchen before dinner's ready. But I'm gonna be there for her anyway, just in case." He tensed, as if on the verge of standing, but didn't rise yet. "We can talk about this here, or you can wait until we're walking to school tomorrow."

Disdaining to wait for him, Akane shot to her feet and headed for the door. "Whatever. I'm going to go jogging." She slid the door open and paused on the threshold, teetering on the edge of saying something else, maybe something bitter and cutting and clever that would still tell him he could change his mind and come along, something like 'Feel free to catch up if you're enough of a man to admit you made a mistake.' But in the end she swallowed the words, turned, and walked proudly and silently away.

-----------------------

"You seem a little uncomfortable, Nabiki dear," Nodoka said, her eyes widening in remorse and belated concern. They'd been sitting here for nearly ten minutes now, ten minutes that Nodoka had quite enjoyed. The middle Tendo was an excellent source of information on her manly son's adventures and exploits, and how great of an impact he'd had on the Tendo family. Nodoka had seen the subtle signs of discomfort in her guest, but it had taken this long for them to actually register with her conscious mind. "Are you all right?"

Nabiki blinked. "What was that, Mrs. Saotome?" she asked. "Uncomfortable...?" Judging from the girl's surprised look, Nodoka concluded that Nabiki herself hadn't realized what she was feeling until it was pointed out. A much darker look flashed across her face, there and gone so quickly that the Saotome matron missed it while blinking. "I'm feeling a little chilly, actually," she apologized. "The draft from that air-conditioning vent is blowing right at me."

Now that Nabiki had pointed it out, Nodoka was able to detect the breeze herself. It wasn't blowing directly at her, and in any case her kimono was much more snug and warm than the outfit Soun's daughter wore. "Let's change seats," she said briskly, standing and gathering the tea and sugar biscuits they had ordered. "And remember, dear, you can call me Auntie."

Nabiki was only too happy to follow her lead, and the pair seated themselves at a booth well away from overzealous air vents. "It seems a little unseasonably warm for autumn," Nodoka mused, wondering whether she should drop a subtle cue to Nabiki about her clothing. She certainly didn't feel that halter tops and short shorts were very appropriate for young ladies.

"The weather's often unpredictable around here," Nabiki said. "Ranma's even taken a few unscheduled flights because of it."

"Just like the one he's on now," Nodoka said. Her voice was warm and her gaze was distant, and all thoughts of nudging Nabiki toward greater propriety were gone with the wind. "It was so sweet how he waited for me to tell him to go, to reassure him that I didn't begrudge him his time away in the sky."

"I'm a little surprised that you wouldn't rather spend this Sunday lunch with him, or even him and Akane," Nabiki replied. "I don't suppose my company is much of a substitute."

"Nonsense, dear," Nodoka said briskly. "I want to get to know all of you girls better. I'm enjoying helping Kasumi with the housework, and we've had some wonderful chats." A faint wrinkle puckered her brow. "I'd like to spend more time with Akane, too, but she seems so busy with schoolwork," the wrinkle deepened ever so slightly, "and training."

"Well, she is Daddy's heir," Nabiki lied through her teeth. Oh, her sister might be that in name, but she knew who Soun was counting on to revive the Tendo dojo.

"I suppose," Nodoka said doubtfully, "but it still seems odd... and that it should be my husband training her rather than her father..." Although so far she had only heard about this fact, not seen it first-had; Genma hadn't yet resumed an active role in Akane's training.

"Mrs. Sao—Auntie, I might as well be frank with you," Nabiki said. "Your husband is a much better martial artist, and a much better teacher, than Daddy." She shrugged. "Think of it as—" The words 'one more thing for Ranma and Akane to share' died in her throat, as a memory of two days past rose up once more, colder by far than the draft from the air conditioner had been. "As something that'll help my sister understand your son better," she finished.

"Well, yes, I suppose you have a point. Maybe it's not perfectly ladylike, but things will be better for them if they have something so powerful in common," Nodoka said, the tentative note changing to one of wistfulness. "If I'd had opportunities like that when I was her age, perhaps I would have been able to go along with Genma and Ranma on their training journey..."

"From the stories I've heard of that journey, you probably wouldn't have enjoyed it much," Nabiki said. "Weariness, cold, hunger, dirt, never having a chance to settle down and have some stability," _'watching your husband engage your son to a dozen different girls,' _"...it didn't sound like much fun to me."

"Oh, Nabiki, I know that," Nodoka said with a sigh. "Genma dearest already told me, after all. Anything that wouldn't have been too much for me, would not have been enough for my son to become the man he turned out to be. I've only had glimpses into the life of a true martial artist, I've never lived it the way Genma and now Ranma have. But if I could have... but if there were more I could have given my precious son..." She sighed again. "I sometimes feel that Genma and Ranma deserved much better than me."

Well over a dozen ways to answer this zipped through Nabiki's mind, but all of them were shot down. This was the first time she'd even suspected that Nodoka possessed such a wonderful vulnerability to exploit, and the time to seize an opening like that was not the instant one learned of it, but after time had been taken to understand and plan for the perfect opportunity...

_'This is your last warning,'_ Cologne's voice rasped out of the depths of her mind. _'If I learn of any more interference from you...'_

With a great deal of effort, Nabiki suppressed a shudder and forced away the memory once more, the sound and frost-blurred sight of that horrible, withered, inhuman... _thing_ that should have been safely in a grave hundreds of years ago. _'Damn you, Cologne,'_ she thought bitterly. _'And damn you too, Mrs. Saotome, for catching me off guard and dragging me out here to lunch. I shouldn't have to push you any further; you ought to be the one doing the pushing by now, to clip your idiot son's wings and settle him down with my little sister.'_

None of this emotion showed on her face or in her voice. Swallowing what she would have liked to say, Nabiki replied, "That doesn't seem right to me, Auntie. If Genma had married someone else, he might have had a son named Ranma... but it wouldn't be the same person as the boy you're so proud of. He never would have existed at all."

By Nabiki's count, Nodoka blinked nine times before she finally found her voice. "I... never really thought of that, dear." The Saotome matron dabbed daintily at her eyes, and cleared her throat. "Thank you."

"Don't mention it," Nabiki said airily. "I'm sure it's what Ranma would want you to hear." She projected an image of 'thoughtful silence' for awhile, finishing her cup of tea and downing a biscuit while Nodoka regained the rest of her composure. "Since we're on the subject anyway, there was something I was a little curious about."

"What would that be, Nabiki?"

"Well, it's that promise that Ranma and Genma made with you. Everything you've said so far makes it sound like you're totally satisfied. Isn't there supposed to be some dramatic moment where you stand up straight and tall and announce into a microphone that Genma was as good as his word, that Ranma Saotome is truly a man among men?" Nabiki asked, arching one eyebrow. "I admit I'm not really familiar with the in's and out's of these archaic honor covenants, but I thought that when something like this was completed successfully, you ought to signify it by destroying the pledge of what would've happened if they'd failed."

"Oh. Oh, dear," Nodoka said faintly, one part of her mind noting with astonishment just how many different emotions she'd experienced so far during this innocuous little chat. The majority of it, though, was focused on sheepish chagrin. "I can't do that, Nabiki."

"Can't? Well, I suppose you have a point; it _has_ only been four days since you got back to them," Nabiki conceded. "I can understand that something like this would need more time before you make your official decision. Even if it doesn't really take that long to see what kind of a man Ranma Saotome is." She offered Nodoka a grin and a wink, a piece of acting that should have won her at least one award.

"Um... well..." Nodoka's answering smile would best be described as 'rueful'. "That isn't really what I meant, dear. It's a different point of honor."

Nabiki blinked. "You've lost me, Mrs. Saotome," she confessed. _'You scatterbrained, half-witted ditz, can't you do even one thing right? Take a damn good look at the picture I went to so much trouble to put together for you, and declare that your son's stupid neck isn't on the line any longer! It's not that complicated!'_

"...It's a little complicated, I'm afraid," Nodoka said, after pausing and searching for words. "The exact agreement was that Genma would bring Ranma up to be a man among men, and they would return to me when his training was complete. And, well," she let out a near-perfect copy of the sheepish chuckle that Nabiki had heard from time to time from Ranma's feminine side, "when _I_ returned to _them_, it invalidated that part of the oath they swore."

"I don't understand how that makes any difference," Nabiki said, fighting a queasy feeling. "The Saotome family is back together again, and Ranma's a bona fide man among men. What's invalidated other than the penalty for failing?"

"It's something you probably can't understand, dear," Nodoka explained. "As you said, you aren't familiar with all the intricacies of a martial artist's honor. But what it all means is that because I went back to them, rather than letting them come back to me, I can't declare the promise fulfilled."

After a long moment, Nabiki replied, "Mrs. Saotome, I don't get it. If you can't actually pass judgment on them, and anyway you've already decided that Ranma is the son you wanted him to be, isn't it as good as fulfilled?"

"No, you misunderstood me," Nodoka said regretfully. "I cannot honorably declare the promise fulfilled. If Ranma were to fall from grace, turn away from honor and dignity and all that he and Genma promised, I would still have to enforce the vow they made."

As good an actress as she was, Nabiki was still unable to stop the color from draining from her face. "So you _can_ call the debt due, and you _can't_ cancel it. Because you came back to them instead of them going to you."

"I'm afraid so," Nodoka murmured. "Please don't blame yourself, dear, you couldn't have known."

_'Wonder how well that would fly with the Amazons,'_ Nabiki thought bitterly. "I wasn't actually planning to, Auntie," she said. "Because, you know, the first time we met you was when you came to our home looking for them."

"Yes, but it was just meant to be a visit," the Saotome matron explained. "That wouldn't have been the same thing at all as returning to them for good. I should have remembered, those days ago when you came to me and told me I could meet them again... I just got so caught up in the moment, in the joy of seeing my son after so long and finding out how wonderful he was, how Genma had raised him to be everything I'd hoped for and more... well, by the time any thoughts of prudence and restraint returned, everything was already settled. Genma and Ranma and I were officially a family once more." Nodoka sighed, then said earnestly, "I haven't forgotten all those things you said that night, Nabiki dear, how eloquent you were about my joining your household to be with my husband and son. It meant so much to me... please don't ever feel ashamed."

"All right, Auntie," Nabiki said bravely. "I won't." _'Tell me something—was your maiden name Kuno?'_ Aloud, she continued, "If that's the way you say it has to be, then I suppose that's all there is to say." At least until she figured a way to move Nodoka past this particular bit of lunacy. Nabiki had utterly no desire to have anyone find out that thanks to her meddling, Nodoka didn't think she could ever release the Saotome menfolk from the Katana of Damocles she held over their heads. Ranma would just pout and sulk and fume, and maybe try some utterly lame, absolutely nonthreatening attempt at revenge... but if he ever complained about it to Shampoo, Nabiki shuddered to think what the consequences would be. _'I won't let that happen. This refugee from the padded cell is damn well going to see things my way. That's at least one piece of 'interference' that the Thing That Came From China can't complain about.'_

"It does seem an awful shame, though, Auntie," she continued earnestly. "You've said it yourself—Ranma is the man you wanted him to be. Shouldn't he at least hear that from you? I know how much you matter to him, how important it is to him that you'd be proud, rather than disappointed. Can't you tell him, even if it's unofficial?" If Nodoka would ever say that, then everything would be fine as soon as Nabiki could think of a way to twist past the woman's latest ridiculous delusion. Nodoka would have _already_ admitted that Ranma was off the hook, and she would be honor-bound to shred that stupid document she'd carried with her for so long.

"He knows, dear," Nodoka reassured her. "I've spent so long apart from my family that I'm making very sure they know I love them and I'm happy to be with them again." She hesitated, eyeing Nabiki with a contemplative, twinkling gaze, then said, "It's nice to see you so concerned for my son, Nabiki. But then again, after living in the same house with him for over a year, I suppose you've grown at least a little fond of him."

"You could say that," Nabiki murmured, putting on her demure mask. "At least a little."

"Well, then... I probably shouldn't say anything," Nodoka equivocated, "but..."

"A secret, Auntie? My lips are sealed. Unless of course it's something you'd like for me to 'let slip' to someone."

"It's just for you, Nabiki. At least for now," Nodoka clarified. "I already told you, because of how things turned out I can't release Ranma and Genma from the promise. But that doesn't mean they can't ever be released."

"What would it take?" Nabiki wanted to know, not bothering to hide her eagerness as she knew Nodoka would simply assume the best possible reason for it. "Would he have to pull off some incredibly difficult, dangerous, manly hijinks? Something that would declare to anyone and everyone that Ranma Saotome was a real man? Stuff like that has already happened several times, and I don't think we'll have to wait all that long before another chance turns up."

"No, dear, that's not what I meant. Like I said, no matter what I cannot be the one to release them from their pledge." Nodoka smiled a thoughtful, hopeful smile. "However, what I _can_ do is transfer the promise over to someone else, once there is someone who can honorably receive it." She paused for a moment, giving Nabiki the chance to ask any questions. When the middle Tendo just waited for her to continue, Nodoka said, "The promise was signed by both Genma and Ranma, but it's my son that is the crux of it. And there will eventually be someone who has as great a claim on him as I, his mother, do."

"You mean my sister, when they're married," Nabiki surmised, stomping down hard on a resurging memory. _'Damn it all, just saying that is not interference! And Cologne's not here to hear it even if it were!'_

"You're close, Nabiki, but no. Not his wife," Nodoka explained, "but his own child. Or children. Once Ranma gives me my first grandchild, there will be someone who depends on him so much that I could not honorably hold the pledge any longer. At that point I can transfer it to the mother of his child, and she will be free to declare it fulfilled for good and all." The Saotome matron heaved a sigh. "How I look forward to that day..."

" 'The mother of his child'? Not 'his wife'? Having a child out of wedlock wouldn't be considered unmanly?" Nabiki wanted to know.

"Of course not," Nodoka said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "You've lived with my son for long enough, Nabiki; surely you've seen that it simply wouldn't be right to expect him to limit himself to just one woman? And just because a woman loved him enough to settle for being a mistress instead of his wife, that certainly shouldn't mean she can never give him children. That would be even more wrong!"

After a long moment of silence, Nabiki said tentatively, "Ah... Auntie, I'm not so sure that Akane is open to that kind of sharing..."

"She'll learn better," Nodoka reassured her guest. "I haven't spent as much time with Akane as I'd like, but even just from my first visits to your home I was able to see some things about her. In some ways she's still very young, isn't she? She still has many lessons that she needs to learn about being a woman, and there hasn't been anyone who could really teach them to her. Kasumi is a wonderful young lady, but some things one simply can't learn from a sister. I plan to be there for Akane, to help her through those difficult times and learn how to be a good wife. Things that she hasn't been able to see yet will become clear in their own time, Nabiki dear. I promise you, by the time your sister and my son actually wed, she won't be selfish enough to think she can keep him all to herself. There will be room for other young ladies who love him and want to be with him." The Saotome matron was too dignified to wink, but with the tone she'd used when speaking that last line and the gleam in her eye as she smiled at Nabiki, she might as well have.

Nabiki smiled smoothly back. Inside, though, she wanted nothing more than to retreat to the safety of her room and lock the door. _'It's official. Today really, really sucks.'_

-----------------------

"I still can't believe I let him talk me into waiting this long," Akane muttered untruthfully. It was the afternoon of Monday, five days after Nodoka's return to her family, and Genma was only just now getting around to resuming her training. The youngest Tendo pulled her gi out of her closet, and took a minute to enjoy the crisp, fresh, clean sensation of a Kasumi-laundered garment. Pulling it on, she turned away from the closet and toward the door. She stopped partway through the motion, though, and instead headed over to her window. Drawing the blinds and opening it, she stared outside for a long moment.

It was a beautiful day. The sun was bright and welcoming, and the autumn air was pleasantly warm. Even as that thought registered, though, a breeze sprung up—one that seemed to carry a bracing hint of days to come, of the exhilaration brought on by the first real cold snap of the year. That was still a long way off, but Akane felt as if she could sense it just around the corner, and a delicious chill raced up and down her spine.

It was amazing how sharp your senses were, when you were trying to distract yourself.

Akane leaned farther out the window and took several deep breaths, as if storing up enjoyable memories. One last breath, then a long sigh, and she muttered, "Okay. No stalling. I told him I was going to do what it takes, and I'm not going to back down. It's not going to be fun, starting in with those pressure points, but I've got to do it." She grimaced. "I wish I hadn't waited this long. It feels a lot scarier now than it did at first. Too much time to think about it, I guess." Maybe there was something to be said for Ranma's usual charge-ahead-without-thinking approach... nah.

Nodding as decisively as she could, Akane turned away from the window and headed out of her room. Down the hallway, taking her mind off the immediate future by focusing on a day farther ahead... down the stairs, picturing herself standing triumphant over a defeated Shampoo... turning to go down the hall that would lead her outside to the dojo... "Hello, M—Auntie," she said politely, as Nodoka stepped out of the kitchen a few feet ahead of her.

"Hello, Akane," the Saotome matron returned, smiling back but also registering a look of disappointment.

Apparently Akane's attempt to keep her mind off the specifics of what she was heading toward was still sharpening her senses, because she noticed. "Is something the matter?" She nearly had to bite her tongue to suppress a knee-jerk question as to whether Ranma had done something boneheaded. Sure, he was the most probable cause if someone had been upset, but it could have been Genma too.

"Well... I was actually hoping we could spend some time together this afternoon," Nodoka replied. "I was just about to start working on dinner. I'd be very happy if you could assist me, Akane."

"Um, I... Actually, I was on my way to train..." Akane said apologetically, indicating her gi.

_'She doesn't sound very enthusiastic about it,'_ Nodoka noted. _'Certainly not like Ranma. Perhaps she only trains because she feels like it's expected of her?'_ Well, if Akane's heart wasn't in the Art, then Nodoka didn't think training in it would be all that helpful in making her a proper wife for Ranma. Certainly it wouldn't be as useful as learning how to cook proper meals for him would be. "Are you sure you wouldn't rather join me for another lesson, dear?" she said hopefully. "I remember the last time I was a guest in your home, how much you wanted to be able to make nice meals for your loved ones. Training is all very well and good, but what does it give you that you can give back to others?"

Akane couldn't find a quick answer for this. Vague thoughts of teaching flitted through her head, but were dismissed almost instantly. The things she was learning from Genma were for her, not for any random students the dojo might one day have. Defeating Shampoo, standing up for herself, not having to rely on Ranma... these were all things she needed for her own sake. "You and Kasumi can make a better dinner than I could," she replied, knowing it was weak but not able to come up with a better response on the spur of the moment.

Her conviction only growing stronger that Akane wasn't training because she wanted to, Nodoka pressed the attack. "But wouldn't you like to change that, Akane? Or at least catch up? It's true that your sister is a very accomplished and talented cook, and you may never equal her. But you can certainly become good enough yourself that your husband would rather have meals cooked by you than anyone else."

Those last two sentences tugged Akane's emotions in so many different directions that she didn't have a clue how to feel. Irritated that something else was trying to get in the way of her pursuit of real Anything Goes? Angry that Nodoka should bring up that stupid arranged marriage and treat it as if it were a done deal? Disheartened at the thought of never being as good as Kasumi? Happy that Nodoka believed in her potential even as much as she did, more than anyone else ever had? _'I don't need this now,' _Akane thought, taking a deep breath and pushing away the confusion. "Didn't you say that you were actually going to start supper now?"

Nodoka blinked. "Yes, dear, that's why I was asking you to join me," she said, too polite to state her confusion at the question but her tone communicating it nonetheless.

"Then that's not the time for me to be in there for a lesson," Akane explained. She put her hands behind her back so that she could unobtrusively clench her fists. "I, I know that I've still got a long way to go before I can cook well." She tried, but couldn't suppress the grimace that getting those words out cost her. "And you want to make a huge, wonderful meal for dinner, right? As good as it can be, and big enough for everyone to eat as much as they want." When Nodoka nodded, she went on, "If I'm in there, it will only slow you down." Another unpalatable truth, but somehow they were coming a little easier now—and Akane found, to her mild surprise, that the thought of the training ahead of her was no longer so unpleasant. It would beat standing out here and admitting to her shortcomings, that was for sure. "Why don't we wait for the weekend? That will give you time to teach me some stuff without hurting the meal you're trying to make for everyone."

"But... today is only Monday," Nodoka pointed out. "What about in the evening? I could give you a lesson then, if you're sure about not joining us in making tonight's dinner. And anyway, I promise that you'll learn a lot if you help out now, and you won't hurt what we're trying to do." She hadn't forgotten how much trouble Akane could be in the kitchen, but surely with both Kasumi and herself working together the youngest Tendo's talents for disaster could be negated. "You'll help us. Any meal is better if it's made with more love."

Akane bit back an 'I don't love that jerk!' response, since it wouldn't invalidate Nodoka's point—she would be cooking for her family as well as her freeloaders. Reluctance to turn Nodoka down was quickly building up again. She forcibly reminded herself that Genma was waiting, and that she was receiving this training because she'd demanded it from him; if she were to slack off now, there was a chance that she might lose it for good. Or at least have to go through a lot of irritation and effort to get him back as her sensei. "I really think I need to train, Auntie," she said. "And I'm sorry, but I can't make it in the evening either. That's when I do my homework."

"If that's really what you want, dear," Nodoka said with a sigh, her disappointment so obvious that Akane trembled on the very brink of taking back the decision and accepting her offer after all.

"Come on, Mom, don't look like that." Akane whirled around to find Ranma standing a few feet behind her. He shot her one unreadable glance, then turned back to Nodoka and regained his best smile. "Akane's right; you oughta start her out with stuff that nobody's expected to eat afterward. If you want some help in the kitchen, I'd be glad to."

Nodoka blinked, uncertain how to respond. His remark about Akane was a little inconsiderate, but that was okay; men weren't supposed to be as sensitive as women. However, the offer was most unexpected. "Thank you, Ranma, but that's all right," she said gently. "Why don't you go for a flight, or see if your father would like your help in Akane's training?"

"You sure, Mom?" Akane didn't even notice the hint of disappointment in his voice, too busy fuming quietly about her stupid excuse for a fiancé once again trying to show her up, acting as if he were light-years better than her at every part of being a girl. That jerk would probably claim that he _still_ was, even without having a Jusenkyo curse to at least give him the body for it! "I'm sure not up there with you and Kasumi, but I can chop and clean and do all the basic stuff, prob'ly even better than you cause of the speed training I've had. Heck, if you were budgeting this much time for making dinner when you were plannin' on having Akane 'help'," the quotation marks around that last word were clearly audible, "then I could probably save you an hour at least!"

"Ranma, you JERK!" Akane snapped before Nodoka could respond. "Do you think you could just _once_ let it slide?"

"What's your problem?" he shot back. "I was talking to Mom, not you, and I was telling her why I'd be a lot of help and that I'd like to!"

"Ranma, I'm glad you'd like to help, and glad that you want to spend time with me," Nodoka said, stepping in before the conversation could escalate, "but you shouldn't upset dear Akane like that. In any case, she's right—even if you could do what's needed, it's not appropriate. This is women's work."

_'Women's work?' _Part of Akane hated that blithe, thoughtless declaration... but she couldn't deny that another part of her agreed with it. It _did_ hurt that she couldn't cook to save her life (or anyone's except Happosai's), it _did_ make her feel like a failure as a girl. And it only made it worse whenever Ranma showed her up.

"Well... maybe so, Mom. But you know that Pop and me spent most of our lives on the road. We didn't have any women around to take care of that stuff," Ranma said gently. "Since I picked up the skills then, might as well use them to help my family now, right?"

For the second time in under ten minutes, Nodoka blinked and tried to process an unexpected reply from her son. _'But... that's... surely Genma dearest ought to have taken mistresses to handle those details...?'_ She searched for a good way to get the conversation back to ground she understood, but came up empty. Her manly son ready, willing, and eager to work in the kitchen, Akane preferring to pass the time in the dojo... it simply wasn't right!

After a few moments spent scrutinizing her son and thinking back over exactly what he'd said, though, Nodoka realized what she was overlooking. Ranma hadn't said he wanted to cook, just that he wanted to be with her and help her. If he really had spent so much time in the past learning something that wasn't exactly manly, well, it was a shame that he hadn't been able to use that time for better things, but it certainly hadn't hurt him any. In fact, it was probably an actual credit to his manliness that it hadn't harmed him!

With that adjustment made, Nodoka was able to find her place in the conversation again. "You might have a point," she said. "I have an idea! Why don't you and Akane both join Kasumi and myself? It might be a little snug, but the kitchen should hold four people. We can all work at the things that we're best suited for."

Akane was still searching for words when Ranma made his response. He shot a worried glance her way, then his jaw firmed with determination as he said, "You can count on me, Mom."

It took every bit of control that she'd learned over the last three and a half weeks to swallow the response she wanted to make. Mrs. Saotome didn't—quite—deserve to see her blow up at her idiotic pervert of a son and throw all his faults in both Saotomes' faces. _'Yeah, we can count on you all right. Count on you to just go along with it when your precious mom's the one trying to shove you and me together. And I know I can count on you to always butt in, to do your best to show me up, to never once let me forget that you're better than me without even trying,'_ Akane thought bitterly. _'Well, you know what, Ranma? Count me out.'_

Taking a deep breath, Akane said steadily, "Thanks for the offer, Mrs. Saotome, but no thanks. I'm sure you and Ranma can make a good dinner. I've got training to do, and I'm already late for it. If you'll excuse me..." Not waiting for a response, she gave a quick nod and hurried down the hall. _'That's two Saotomes down and one to go,'_ she thought as she passed through the door that took her from the house to the dojo walkway. _ 'At least Mr. Saotome is supposed to be giving me a hard time.'_

----------------------

Akane twisted desperately to the side, hoping it would be enough. Genma's incoming strike parted the air an inch away from her shoulder. Before the Saotome master could recover or follow up on the attack, she twisted around through the rest of her one-eighty degree turn and clamped down on his arm. Ignoring as best she could the crawling, intrusive sensation from his wildly flaring aura, Akane gave a tremendous yell and pivoted once more, substituting brute force for finesse as she threw the man as hard as she could. Pain shot through her from a dozen different areas, flickering over her body like a crackling sheet of lightning, but the triumph of the moment was enough to let her forget it.

The triumph was very short-lived, though. Even as she released her grip on Genma's arm, his left foot snaked higher to let his big toe tag her shoulder in the very point his previously-dodged attack had been aiming for. Akane stumbled and clenched her teeth as a new lance of pain blossomed, joining and strengthening the ones already running riot through her body. Meanwhile, she saw through tear-blurred eyes, Genma regained control of his flight almost immediately by reaching up and bracing one palm against the ceiling. Akane had barely recovered her balance by the time he touched lightly down, turned, and pressed the attack again. He'd never even moved far enough away for her to get a clear view of anything!

However, though Genma's aura was thick enough in the air to render him blurred, flickering, and indistinct Akane's eyes, she was able to make some things out well enough. The elder Saotome still wasn't moving any faster or with greater power than he had at the start of their spar—and though Akane was hardly pleased to admit it, she knew this was a lower level than he used in his morning battles with Ranma. _'If you don't want me to hold back, show me I can't afford to,'_ his voice growled again in her memory. _'Prove me wrong, girl, or don't talk back to the sensei.'_ Well, she'd been trying to do just that, but it didn't seem to be working. Early on she'd pressed several furious attacks, determined to get through to Genma, to connect with one decisive hit that would more than counter the taps and touches that were the only attacks he was using. Each time, though, he'd dodged, blocked, or softened her attack enough to take no damage from it, and had managed to tag at least one more pressure point on her to boot.

She was trying to adjust, trying not to keep on making the same mistakes. Since her first idea had brought her nothing but rapidly mounting pain, Akane had found the motivation to craft a new plan on the fly. Admittedly, 'fight defensively and hit him when he makes a mistake' wasn't a very complicated plan, and she hadn't been able to pull off the second half of it yet, but it had at least let her keep fighting. If she hadn't changed tactics, Akane knew she would have been defeated fifteen minutes ago.

Then Genma was upon her again, and it was all she could do to hold him off. At one point he changed the direction of his attack entirely, reversing his momentum and just managing to tag her wrist with his index finger. Even as she pulled frantically back Akane couldn't stop herself from flinching at the expectation of a new surge of pain. Nothing came, however, which surprised her enough that she stumbled and nearly lost her balance entirely—an opening which allowed Genma to drive around and in from the side, a needle appearing from seemingly nowhere into the grip of his first and second knuckles. It penetrated her gi just above her left hip and birthed the pain-flare she'd expected a few seconds back.

_'I can't keep this up,' _Akane realized. Genma had retreated a few steps back, his usual courtesy after landing another successful shiatsu strike. Instead of trying to adjust to the new and greater pain, she let out a gasping, bitten-back cry of agony and sank to one knee. "I... I can't do this," she said through clenched teeth. "It, it hurts so much..."

Genma sighed, but at least had the decency to spare the histrionics he would have unleashed if Ranma had made such a statement. Akane supposed she should be grateful for that. "All right," he said gruffly, walking over and offering her a hand up. "I'll undo the p—OOF!" This last as Akane uncoiled from her pose with all the strength and focus she had left, driving her fist into the elder Saotome's gut.

She tried to follow up with a knock-out blow to the head, but this attack was foiled; Genma had never powered down his aura, and even as he staggered backward from Akane's sucker-punch, he concentrated it all into a semisolid wave outward from him and away to the right. Akane's vision was distorted worse than ever, and this in combination with the force of the defense caused her to miss by a solid foot, leaving her stumbling away from the Saotome master.

By the time she recovered and turned back to face him, Genma had put almost the length of the dojo between them. His aura was still out in full force, obscuring both himself and the area near him, but for the first time since their spar began Akane was able to see things near her clearly. "Not bad, Akane," he allowed through clenched teeth, frowning and rubbing at his gut.

Akane took a moment to consider the situation. She wished their positions were reversed; Genma's corner of the dojo was the one that held several items which would have made admirable missiles. Long-range was looking more and more like the best way to approach the battle, but at this point she couldn't see any good way of doing that. She still had some fight in her, but the constant pain was wearing her down even as Genma stood there enjoying uncontested recovery. Bracing herself, knowing that doing nothing was the wrong thing and hoping this might not be, Akane shot forward on the attack again.

"All right, girl!" Genma bellowed, charging in as well. "Have at you!" And now he wasn't holding back at all, Akane realized with intense dismay, now he was striking as quickly as he could, blasting aside her attack with a force that nearly numbed her wrist, opening her guard and lashing out to strike a good dozen pressure points in the span of a few seconds. Akane gave a flinch that would have had her mother warning her about her face freezing like that, and waited miserably for the new apocalypse of agony.

After a few seconds, as the last of her old shooting pains died away to nothing, she unfroze. "Huh?" she said feebly.

Genma snorted. "I already told you I was going to undo the points. Let's take a break." Without waiting for a response, he turned and headed back for the corner of the dojo.

"Wait..." Akane said uncertainly. Hearing that note and frowning at herself, she called out more firmly, "Wait! I can keep going!"

Genma didn't even turn around, though he did wave a hand dismissively. "Rest assured, Akane, if I thought working you into the ground was the best way to train you, I'd do it."

"Guess I can believe that," she muttered as she walked over to join him.

Genma, meanwhile, had reached the corner where Ranma's emergency thermos was stored. That was of no interest to him now, however. Instead, he picked up the covered bucket that rested beside it, took off the lid, and threw a good measure of its contents in his face. "Ah, that's refreshing," he said, the words packed with immense satisfaction.

"You weren't even sweating," Akane pointed out moodily.

"Doesn't make it any less refreshing," he shot back. "If nothing else, there's the fact that I'm not suddenly wearing a thick fur coat."

"I guess there is that," she replied. Not surprising that he hadn't yet gotten over the fact that he wasn't cursed any more, though she was still hopeful that someday he'd forget and try to get out of trouble by splashing himself and pulling the panda routine. Akane hesitated for a moment, then pulled up the floorboards that hid Ranma's change of clothes. There was also a towel there, which she soaked in the remaining contents of the bucket and draped around her neck. She sat down next to the wall, letting out a deep sigh and enjoying the relative lack of pain. All that was left were the familiar twinges and slow burn that accompanied an all-out practice.

A few feet away from her Genma sank down into the lotus position. "So what do you think of the training so far, Akane?" he inquired.

Akane managed a feeble smile. "Please just tell me tomorrow isn't going to be as much worse than today, as today was from yesterday."

"Ha. No, don't worry," Genma assured her. "Our afternoon sessions are all going to be the same as today's, for at least the next two weeks."

"W- What? Why?" Akane wanted to know. "I thought Anything Goes meant we always had to be doing different stuff!"

"Bah. True Anything Goes is about unpredictability and adapting to anything, girl. That means you don't depend on patterns and you don't expect things to go just how you expect them." Genma peered owlishly at her through his glasses. "I thought for a minute there at the end that you were starting to pick up on that."

"Yeah, yeah. _I_ thought I could at least count on what you yourself told me!" she shot back. "You said I always had to keep doing new stuff to keep growing as quickly as possible!"

"And I also told you why we were using these pressure points! Because that can only go so far, and then it loses its effectiveness."

"But surely keeping that method up while combining it with the new stuff would be best," she argued. Genma stared at her for a long, silent moment, and eventually Akane felt the wind go out of her sails. "All right," she sighed, "I know who's the teacher here. You don't have to say it."

"If it makes you feel any better, neither your father nor I got anything like the easy time you had of things yesterday," Genma said. "I used only a few points on you, and all you had to do was push through katas while ignoring their effects. When the Master got around to this phase of our training, he used real injuries to provide the pain, and the only time he had us doing katas was when he demanded that we use only those moves while we escaped from a bunch of homicidal women he'd stirred up."

Akane made a mental note to ask her father about this training. She wouldn't put it past Mr. Saotome to exaggerate the peril he personally had faced. Come to think of it, she wouldn't put that past her own father either, but if his story clashed with Genma's then she could conclude they were both full of hot air. "Well, I'm glad you're taking it easier than that on me," she said.

"What about the aura?" he asked. "Are you beginning to get a feel for just what I'm doing? Remember, the ultimate goal of these exercises is to teach you aura control." Well, that and make her into a real martial artist rather than a pretense of one, he mused, not to mention getting her and Ranma on better common ground. And, above and beyond all else, prove to the boy that his father still had a few respectable tricks up his sleeve.

"Are you kidding?" Akane asked incredulously. "We only fought for about twenty minutes! That's not anywhere near enough time!"

"No, I suppose not," Genma said remorsefully. "I guess I'm just too used to Ranma, and how quickly he picks up on things." _'That ought to motivate her to push a little harder. Or a lot.'_ He suppressed a smug smile at how skilled a motivator he was.

"What, you mean like the Cat Fist?" Akane shot back. Then, in an instant, her gaze tracked away and behind Genma, and her face changed from snarling to horrified. "Oh! Mrs. Saotome!"

Genma spun so fast he nearly herniated his still-bruised stomach, his face losing all color in a heartbeat. "D- Dear! I... wha?" The dojo was empty behind him, and all the doors remained closed. Eventually recovering some of his composure, he turned back and snarled to Akane, "If you want any more lessons from me, don't you _dare_ hit that low again! Take me down with a sneak attack and I'll just congratulate you on finally starting to learn our school, but don't ever joke around about hurting my family that much!"

Akane had already reached a similar conclusion. She grimaced, hung her head, and said, "You're right. I'm sorry. I think I got a little too carried away, what with finding a method that was actually sort of working against you and Ranma."

"All right," he said gruffly. "Apology accepted."

After a few minutes of thoughtful silence, Genma reopened the conversation. "Since we're on the subject of Nodoka, I will say I'm a little disappointed in you, Akane."

She frowned. "Is this about yesterday, and me not wanting to spend my afternoon in the kitchen like a good little girl?"

"It's about yesterday, all right," he said, frowning right back at her. "I couldn't care less about the 'good little girl' part, though, and you ought to know that without me having to say it."

"Then what? How I didn't choke down every last little word of protest when Ranma started being his usual obnoxious self, just because his mother was there?"

That was unwelcome news to Genma, but he shrugged it off. Akane couldn't have been too strident in her protests or he would have heard about it. "No. It's about my wife," he rumbled. "She really did want to spend time with you, Akane, she would have been happy to help you learn your way around the kitchen. She was hurt when you turned her down, and not only for the afternoon but also the evening compromise she offered you. She was disappointed enough that I noticed almost at once last night."

"I'm sorry about that," she replied. "I... I would have liked to be able to take her up on it." At least before Nodoka had the bright idea of getting both her and Ranma in there together. "But this was more important! My training is more important than that."

"How, exactly?" he wanted to know.

"What do you mean, how?" she demanded. "Do you want me to come right out and say it? Gonna pick up the slack for Ranma, since he has to keep a lid on the worst of the insults now? Fine! I'm a horrible cook! I admit it! Even _Ranma's_ better than me!" She spat the last words out as if trying to rid her mouth of the taste of them, then sat panting quietly for a few seconds. Almost immediately the worst of the disgust faded though, replaced by a small measure of relief. She'd spent a sleepless hour last night thinking these things over, doing her best to wrap her mind around the hard, hurtful truths she'd sort of admitted to earlier in the day. "It's not like it wasn't hard to say no to her," Akane continued. "It's not like I wouldn't like to get better. To be able to cook a nice meal for everyone, and, and not have them try to run away or make fun of me. But every time I've tried to do anything on my own, I've messed it up. It takes the Water of Life for me to be able to cook a good meal, and last time I checked they weren't selling that in jugs at the market."

"That's right, girl. There are no shortcuts," Genma pronounced. "Since you already see that for yourself, I'm confused as to why you don't think you need practice."

"I never said that! I said I couldn't afford it. As long as I've been trying and as little progress as I've made, I... I know that this isn't something that I can get without really working hard for it, for a long time. And I don't have the time now! Why couldn't she have asked me on Sunday instead, when a certain slacker excuse for a sensei still hadn't started back up with our lessons yet?"

"Oh, come now," the excuse in question blustered. "There were only five days where I cancelled our lessons—no, less than that! We trained on Wednesday morning, as I recall. Because I took less than a week off for my wife finally coming back to me and Ranma, that makes me a slacker?"

"No," Akane was forced to admit, "that's not what makes you a slacker." Genma gave a brisk, satisfied nod, and she continued, "But it was sure enough of a reason for me not to throw away the first session when you were finally ready to start teaching me again!"

Actually, Genma had agreed with that from the beginning. _'Let 'em think they're winning, so you can catch them off guard at the right moment.'_ "All right, Akane, I suppose you have a point," he said graciously. "It even does you credit that you didn't shrink back from the trial waiting for you." It was Akane's turn to give a self-satisfied nod. "However, that excuse only works for the afternoon. Remember, that wasn't the only offer Nodoka made. She offered to meet you halfway, and you just shook your head and walked off. I think that was what hurt her more than anything else, girl."

"Why?" she shot back. "I told her, the evening's when I do my homework!"

"Then you should get Ranma to help you with it," Genma said, pouncing like a verbal tiger. Akane's jaw gaped feebly open as his brilliant suggestion registered with her, and he gladly filled the silence she left. "I know he also uses the evenings for his homework, and I also know he doesn't take nearly as long as you at it. And yet his grades are just as good as yours! Except in English, anyway," he conceded. "So you see, if the two of you worked together, it would only help—"

"Are you INSANE!" Akane burst out. "Mr. Saotome, do you really not know why Ranma gets the grades he does?" When the man's clueless expression answered the question for him, she heaved the biggest, most exasperated sigh she could manage and explained, "The teachers _give_ them to him. They all hate Principal Kuno, and Ranma does a good job of keeping him in line. And even when he does act up, Ranma always makes sure he gets what's coming to him." At least, he always had up until this last time. If Ranma had even been involved in the last Hawaiian hullabaloo, Akane hadn't seen it. She wondered for a moment whether his grades would slip as a result, then returned to the conversation. "Ever since that first time, he's also gone easy on the teachers when they get dragged into the mess. That's the only reason he's got a decent grade point average. I'm sure he could earn it if he put in the effort, but he doesn't. Miss Hinako won't go along with the rest of the teachers, which is why his English grades are so much worse. _That's_ the kind of scores I'd be getting if I went to Ranma for 'help'." She used the exact same inflection on the final word as the boy in question had the previous day when referring to her.

Genma frowned as he mulled over the unexpected revelation. One conclusion, at least, was easy enough to reach. "Please don't ever tell Nodoka any of that," he said as he continued to ponder.

"Of course not," Akane said with a sigh, then muttered, "Far be it from me to ever disappoint her in her precious, perfect son."

"...So, wouldn't the same thing be true for you?" the Saotome master said, not having heard the last part. "After all, you stand up to the Principal too, you cause trouble for him, you at least manage to give Ranma some backup. Couldn't you let everything except English slide and free up time that way...?"

"Don't... even... _start_... with that," Akane ground out. Her face bore such a strong resemblance to a thundercloud that Genma felt a quick urge to duck under an umbrella. "How dare you! I'm never going to stoop so low."

He frowned, finding his backbone again. Every time he thought she might really be starting to learn the lessons of Anything Goes, she'd pull something like this and disappoint him. "Then you'd better talk to every teacher you've got tomorrow, right?" he returned. "You'll want to find out how many times they gave your score a little nudge without you even realizing it. And you'll need to go back all the way to last year to have them undo it!"

Once again, Akane's jaw dropped. Eventually, she muttered, "Let's change the subject."

Carefully suppressing a smile of triumph, Genma said, "Right. Back to Nodoka, and cooking lessons if she wants to give them to you."

Akane let loose a noise that was half growl and half moan. "Not _that_ subject!"

"Then what?" he countered. Ever since that first night of terror in the mountains, Genma had never lost sight of the fact that eventually, after Ranma and Akane were married, he was going to be eating at least some meals made by her. This might be the best chance he'd ever get to push her toward competence. "Akane, you said yourself that you want to get better. You admitted that you need practice. My wife wants to spend time with you, to get to know you, and she's offering to do it through something that's just what you need and want! I don't see the problem here! You could at least make a little time in the evenings."

"Arrgh! Fine! I can't promise that I can manage it all the time, but I guess I can do a half-hour here and there." _'He just had to get all reasonable, didn't he?'_ Silently Akane promised herself that she wasn't going to let this turn into another one of those stupid struggles not to get shown up by Ranma. Then, not silently at all, she declared, "With her. Not if she wants to drag Ranma into it too."

"I don't think you need to worry about that," Genma said with a wince. "Nodoka dearest might have been willing to let Ranma into the kitchen yesterday, but she certainly isn't going to encourage him to cook." He felt certain that he was the only man in the history of Japan to have his wife chide him for never taking even one mistress.

"Good. That's enough of a break," Akane declared, standing up and tossing her towel into the corner, grateful that she'd had its coolness to mitigate the heat of her temper. The conversation had been almost as stressful in its own way as the training she was supposed to be recovering from. She got into a ready stance and called out, "Do your worst, Mr. Saotome!"

"Ha. No thank you, Akane," he riposted as he got to his feet, his aura writhing forth to fill the room. Genma hadn't told her, but these exercises weren't just training for her; the energy his tactic was constantly expending was good practice for him too. He was going to forge this amateur into a true Anything Goes warrior, and make himself a stronger fighter in the process! He'd like to see the Master or the old woman manage that! "I'd rather do my best!"

-----------------------

Ukyo took a deep breath to calm herself. It was the seventeenth such breath she'd taken since starting out from her restaurant, and she wasn't even a third of the way to her destination yet. "This isn't going to be easy," she said to herself.

"Since when is anything in my life ever easy?" Ranma replied. "It's not too late to change your mind, you know. I could carry ya back to your place in two minutes flat."

She opened her mouth to respond. Then, as the full impact of the offer he'd made hit her, she clapped it shut, blushed, and considered. He had said it so casually, without being nervous or reluctant or anything! A week ago he'd done the same thing, carrying her without hesitation to the top of Furinkan so they could talk about his mother's return to his life. That had been nice and she'd thought it was a hopeful sign, that he would do that all by himself, but she hadn't lost sight of the fact that she'd been in her boy's uniform at the time. To have him make a repeat of the offer now, when she was dressed in her finest, most feminine kimono... well, Ukyo could only see it as a good omen. Ranma had been nervous of getting close for far too long. These indications that he was finally getting over that were a welcome development in her book.

"Ucchan?" His voice roused her from a daydream where the two were _much_ closer than just him carrying her rapidly through the street.

"Um, could you repeat the ques—oh, right." She paused, fighting off one last impulse to tell Ranma that if he carried her slowly instead of quickly, he'd have himself a deal. "Ranma honey, is there something you're not telling me? I mean, I thought we'd settled this."

He shrugged, looking away from her. "I dunno, Ucchan," he said uncomfortably. "Something about this... it just feels wrong. Can't say why, though."

Ukyo chewed her lower lip. On the one hand, Ranma might not be convinced that this was the best way to approach things (though heck if she could figure out what problem he had with it), but she felt certain it was. On the other, there were many prices she'd pay to make a good first impression on Ranma's mother, but trampling on his own feelings wasn't one of them. "Sugar, I think we need to talk about this a little more," she said at last. "Tell you what—why don't you give me that ride, except carry me to where we were already going. You and I can talk this over there, and if we decide not to go this route after all, you just won't call your mom to come join us." She thought that was a nice compromise, especially since it'd mean the two of them would spend even more time together today, and was a bit miffed when Ranma still looked dubious. "What, is there a problem with that too?"

"Just wondering... is the kind of stuff we're gonna be talking about really something we oughta be doing out in the open?" he answered. "What if there's kids from school there? I know you said the place is in a quiet, out of the way corner, but I wouldn't bet ten yen against half our class randomly showing up anyway. What if I carry ya back to your place, we talk there, and then if we still want to do this I carry you back? We won't lose too much time that way."

"You know, I should have suggested that myself," Ukyo said with a wide grin. "Okay, let's go!"

A couple of blurring minutes later, seated now next to Ranma in Ucchan's Okonomiyaki, she mused ruefully on another good reason to come back here rather than race ahead to their original destination. "Ranma honey, when we leave again remind me to take a hairbrush and a mirror with me."

"I dunno, your hair kinda looks good like that," he teased her. "It's got that whole 'wild energy and freedom of the sky itself' thing going."

She stuck her tongue out at him. "Maybe so, but that ain't the image I'm wanting to present here." Both of them sobered at that.

Ukyo waited a few moments, seeing if Ranma would explain whatever was bothering him. When he held silent, she spoke again. "Ranchan, I know your idea for your mother first getting to know me was to bring her here while the restaurant was open, have her watch the Ukyo in her natural habitat, let her see first-hand how good a cook I am and all that jazz. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but I still don't see why my idea isn't better. You even agreed it probably was!"

"Yeah, you're prob'ly right," he admitted. "It's just... I dunno. Something about this just doesn't feel right to me. I'm not sure what."

"Then let's talk it over a little more," Ukyo said with a sigh. "You suggested having your mom come here, and see me the same way I am every day. Is that still the way you're thinking about doing it, when you say that my idea doesn't feel right?"

"Yeah," he admitted, looking down at the counter rather than meeting her gaze. "I remember all that stuff you said, about how you going to meet her dressed up all formal and demure and stuff will probably make the best first impression, rather than bringing her here to talk with you while it's business as usual. But... it's just..." He broke off, clearly trying to put his thoughts into words. Ukyo held silent and gave him the time he needed to do so, and eventually he said, "I just don't think you should have to do it like that. I mean, get all dolled up like that, spend forty-five minutes on a walk that should've taken twenty cause you gotta take such tiny little steps, hide the best part of who you really are so you can pretend for Mom, show her something that she'd like to—YAAAH!"

Midway through that recitation, Ukyo's fingers had begun to twitch. Once Ranma dug himself past a certain depth, she'd casually reached over to where her mega-spatula was stored, grasped firm hold of the handle, and brought it over, around, and down. The flat of her weapon smashed against the counter, parting the air an inch from Ranma's nose.

"W- What the heck was that for?" he wanted to know, unconsciously patting himself down as if searching for damage.

"For being such a jackass, you jackass!" Ukyo fired back, almost immediately realizing it hadn't been much of a snappy comeback. "Since when is this," she made an impassioned gesture that took in her kimono, her makeup, and the hair that _had_ been neatly arranged, once upon a time, "some kind of pretense?"

"Uh... Is this a trick question?"

This time the spatula was aimed at his head. He deflected it with ease, which partly irritated Ukyo further, and partly reassured her. He wouldn't have done that unless he'd expected the hit, which presumably meant that on at least some level he'd known that was a stupid thing to say. "Yes!" she shot back. "You're making it sound like I'm trying to pull the wool over your mother's eyes, lying to her face about who I am and what I want! Like I had to go out and buy this kimono for today's meeting, and go to a freaking costume artist to put the makeup on for me!" She paused, glaring fiercely at him, waiting for him to make another stupid comment. This time he didn't, which Ukyo hoped was due to the fact that he knew better—she'd already owned this outfit and he'd been there to watch her apply the cosmetics.

Then again, of course, it could have just been the glare that kept him silent. Ukyo took a few deep breaths and smoothed it away, along with the temper that had birthed it. "You don't really think that, do you Ranma?" she asked quietly. "That none of this is who I really am? That it's all just some game to impress your mother, since she's so traditional?"

It took him a long time to reply. "I guess not," he said at last, reluctantly but with enough conviction to at least spare himself another spatula slam. "I remember those kimonos from the time I stayed here during that deal with the Gambling King. But... I also remember that time with your secret sauce, and how bad you took it when the stuff didn't turn out right... I remember you tryin' to bury every bit of the Ucchan I knew in a mask like this..." He gestured toward her, up and down, indicating with his gesture the same things she had a minute ago.

She sighed a sigh of relief. "Ranchan, you big silly... you should've told me before now that was what you thought. We could've gotten this cleared up a long time ago."

"Huh?"

The clueless, befuddled look on his face was so cute that the chef had to giggle. "You're only partly right about what happened then," she said, merriment fading as quickly as it had come. Those were some pretty unpleasant memories after all, and not just her own suffering but also the utter crap the Tendos had browbeaten Ranma into going along with. Silently Ukyo resolved, for roughly the two hundred and seventieth time, to help her fiancé win free of those jackasses. "Yeah, I took that failure with the sauce awfully hard. Way too hard. No way should I have let it make me think I needed to give up okonomiyaki and just be a woman."

"Got that right," Ranma declared.

"Yeah, so from what you said it sounded like you thought that was giving up all of me, and latching on to something completely different?"

"Um... well, yeah..." From the tone with which he spoke, Ukyo thought it was beginning to sink through his skull that the idea was wrong.

"Well, you're wrong," she confirmed briskly. "Okonomiyaki is the biggest part of me, but it's not the only part! This," once again she gestured to the outfit she wore, "this is too. It's who I want to be, as a woman, and... as a w- wife, someday." She couldn't meet his eyes as she said that last part, blushing and looking down at her hands, clenched nervously in her lap to stop herself from reaching for the spatula again. Ranma wasn't responsible for her embarrassment, and he didn't deserve her taking it out on him.

"Well, you definitely look the part now," he said. **_CLANG!_ **"OUCH!"

"S- sorry about that," Ukyo managed, distantly certain that she was going to have to redo her makeup. A blush this intense had to have melted it.

After rubbing his head for a few moments, Ranma spoke again. "Okay, Ucchan. I guess now I don't feel so bad about goin' this route to introduce you to Mom. But there are a couple of things I realized somewhere in here, that I think I oughta point out." Ukyo wrinkled her brow, but before she could say anything he hurriedly continued, "Stuff you might not have thought about. Like... I understand now, about how this really is a part of you. But like you said, it ain't the biggest part. That's okonomiyaki, and how great you are at it, how you can even run your own restaurant all by yourself and still keep up your schoolwork and even manage to practice the Art too... that's real impressive, you know." He grinned at her, even as one hand fended off the Return of the Spatula. "I still think it's kind of a shame to not let Mom in on that, to show her something else just cause that's what she'd be more expecting to see."

"I understand, Ranma. But I don't think so," she said. "There'll be time. I can show her that stuff later. I... what I mean is..." she gulped, trying to force down the lump in her throat and return some moisture in its place. "This meeting... it's not about me, not trying to say, 'Look at me, see how impressive I am.' It's about you and me, and... and that I'm your fiancée. That's why I want to do it like this." By the end of the speech her heart was pounding harder than it did during all but her fiercest training sessions, and it would have taken more strength than Ukyo possessed to look her fiancé in the eyes. Simply getting those words out was as hard as anything had ever been.

It took a long time for him to respond; by the time he did, Ukyo had almost recovered enough composure to look at him again. "I guess I understand too," he said quietly. "There was one other thing, but now I'm not sure if I should just drop this or what."

"Go ahead and tell me," she invited.

"It was the last thing I thought of, a reason why we oughta let Mom know right from the beginning how important okonomiyaki is to you," Ranma said. He gritted his teeth and clenched one fist as he continued. "Because she needs to know that, needs to understand it... for when we tell her about that stupid stunt my old man pulled with your cart."

"Oh." That was all Ukyo could say for awhile, as she turned this idea over in her mind. To her dismay, she couldn't find an answer for this one.

"Yeah." Ranma sighed. "Pop's made some really bad calls, stuff I sure don't want to have hit Mom over the head, like the real deal with Jusenkyo, and the C- Cat Fist. But this one thing the old man is gonna have to face the music for. I just hope Mom won't take it too hard." He hesitated, then continued, "It might help if you could let her know that you had him at your mercy and you didn't feel like honor demanded you actually spill his blood."

"Or..." Ukyo paused, breathed, then said, "Or I could just not get that far into specifics, Ranchan."

"Huh?"

"I mean, all we really need to do is tell your mom about the promise your father made." She forced a smile. "I guess there's no need to get so far into it as discussing my dowry, and how that jackass took off with it. At least not now, not at this first meeting. If you want, I'll keep my mouth shut about that little piece of the picture."

"You'd... you'd do that, Ucchan?"

The look on his face and the hope with which he'd spoken settled it for Ukyo. "Yeah. Don't get me wrong, Sugar," she warned, "You know I don't think your old man is much of a prize. And even though you say your mom's happy with him, that doesn't automatically make me want to do whatever I can to keep her feeling like that. But... for you, Ranma, I'll do it. As long as your mother doesn't ask too many questions and drag it out of me, I'll keep quiet about just what your jackass of a father pulled."

-----------------------

"Well, there ain't any other students here," Ranma said as he glanced around the café. "Wonder how long that'll last."

"With any luck at all, that's how it'll be for the whole time we're here," Ukyo replied. "I don't come here all that often, of course, but I don't think I've ever seen anyone else from Furinkan any of the times I've come. That's why I suggested this place in particular." She gestured around at the quiet elegance surrounding them, and wished for a moment that Ranma had had a nicer outfit to wear. "Well, that and the nice décor, the high quality service, the really good tea and all that." The chef hesitated for a moment, then said, "You told me your mom seems pretty well set financially, right? I mean, she's certainly not hurting for money?"

"You don't know the half of it." Ranma grinned. "I found out something more specific since I first told you about her. She's a lot better than 'pretty well set'. You know how it's traditionally the woman's job to keep household finances and stuff in order, right?"

"Yeah, that's right." That was one traditionally feminine arena where Ukyo had no qualms at all about her skill. Successfully running a restaurant taught one about money matters very quickly. "I guess she's had plenty of time to practice. And to save up."

"More than just that." His grin widened. "She made a lot of money over the years with some real good investments. I dunno how much, but I do know how funny it was watching the old man find out about it, an' then realize that since it's supposed to be 'a woman's place to keep the purse strings'," he quoted Nodoka's gentle rebuke with an expression that his traditional, genteel, refined mother wouldn't wear even while drunk, "he couldn't get his hands on it."

With great effort, Ukyo suppressed a guffaw that likely would have gotten them thrown out of the restaurant. "Well, that's good to know. Then she won't have a problem with the prices this place charges."

"They're a little on the steep side, huh?" he asked, looking around once more at the quality surrounding them.

She snorted. "You could say that. There's a reason I don't come here often, y'know."

"Well, it looks like a great place to bring Mom. I'm gonna go call her and invite her to come on over," he said, rising from the table and ambling away.

_'Guess this is where we find out if his mom can even make it.'_ Ranma hadn't said anything about it, but Ukyo at least hadn't missed the possibility that there was one way their plan could go awry—they were counting on Nodoka being home to receive the call and being willing to drop whatever she was doing to come to a café she'd never visited before, simply on the strength of an out-of-the-blue request by her son. Of course, she thought with a smirk, from what Ranma had told her that wasn't really an accurate rendition of the facts. All they were really counting on was Nodoka being there to take the call. Everything else on that list was a given, not something they just _hoped_ would go right. And if it turned out that Nodoka wasn't there when her son called, well, that would just mean she and Ranma would spend a little more time together now and try this again tomorrow.

Somehow, though, she could feel a deep-down certainty that Nodoka was home, that the meeting was going to happen today. As she watched Ranma go, she felt the first faint stirrings of butterflies in her stomach once more. _'Stupid, get a hold of yourself! It was only a week ago that Ranchan was telling you how his mother was back in his life for good, and right away you were asking him when you'd get to meet her! Where's all that determination gone, huh Ukyo?'_ the chef asked herself.

It didn't seem to help. The trembling and quivering grew stronger. And really, Ukyo thought, was it any wonder? Her fiancé was the one with enough surplus confidence to fire it off in blasts of power, and even he was nervous at the prospect of this meeting. She knew him well enough to pick up on that, to read the emotion even as he tried to hide it completely.

However, she also knew him well enough to see the determination. Ranma might be anxious, might have some qualms about what could go wrong with this meeting, but that was only natural given the kind of things that happened in his life. "Just try and think of this the same way he does," she murmured. "Ranchan knows we need to do this, and that's all that matters to him. He's not freaking out about his mother not liking me, or worrying she'll have a hissy-fit when she learns Akane's not the real fiancée, or imagining some rival out for a rematch busting in on us, or..." She clamped her mouth shut and tried to focus on the funny story he'd told her about Genma, Nodoka, and the family finances. It would be best to triumph over her fit of nerves, but failing at that she'd at least settle for a distraction.

"Well, hey there. What's a gorgeous babe like you doing all alone in a place like this?"

"Back off, Soichiro, I saw her first!"

"Hey, wait a minute... don't you go to Furinkan with us?"

"Hot DAMN, that's right! You're Ukyo Kuonji! Where the heck do you get off keeping beauty like _this_ under wraps at school?"

Ukyo blinked, coming out of her reverie and gaping at the sight before her. The four teens who'd spoken were only the tip of the iceberg; standing in the aisle next to her table were twelve boys in blue, jostling each other and jockeying for the position that would allow one of them to slip into the seat across from her. "Holy crap! When I said I wanted a diversion, I didn't mean the whole frickin' kendo team!" she exclaimed, too shocked to keep the complaint within the silence of her own mind.

"Nay, fair flower, these oafs are but the most skilled of the team, not its entirety." The turbulence of the crowd halted at once, each kendoist as frozen at those words as Ukyo was herself. "And fear not—the witless fools shall not disturb our tryst." Tatewaki swept an elegant bow, which from Ukyo's perspective just meant that his head briefly dipped out of sight. The rest of him had already been hidden by the crowd between her and the son of the house of Kuno.

Tatewaki didn't let that state of affairs continue for long, though. Rising from his bow and drawing his bokken in the same motion, he proclaimed, "Away with you, varlets!" and surged forward, one mighty strike sending his subordinates rolling away like so many bowling pins. He allowed himself one burst of satisfied laughter, then slid neatly into the seat Ranma had vacated a little while ago. "Ah, fair maiden, truly it has been far too long since you revealed your true, glorious beauty. I regret only that I have no flowers to bestow upon you—but wait! Light seeking light doth light of light beguile!" As quickly as he'd seated himself, but far more welcomely, Kuno was back on his feet and striding away.

Knowing that the restricting grip of her kimono meant she'd never be able to outrun him, Ukyo simply sat and wished she'd brought her combat spatula after all. Ranma said his mother carried the Saotome family sword with her all the time, right? Why hadn't she thought of that when she made the decision to leave her own armament at home?

All too soon, Kuno was back again, his arms full of flowers. The Blue Thunder had appropriated the centerpiece from each table in the café, pausing only to chuck a fistful of yen at the insolent fool of a manager who'd thought to protest. "Pray accept these as a poor substitute for the roses of deepest crimson that are themselves inadequate, but the best that a poor love-stricken fool could hope to bestow upon thee."

Ukyo smiled sweetly back at him. "Oh, Upperclassman Kuno, I think you could give me something _much_ more welcome than roses." _'Ranma honey better hurry up and get his ass back here. If I have to listen to this idiot for long, I'll... I'll... I'll pay Nabiki whatever it takes for her to arrange a vacation for everyone from Moronmasa here.'_ Hell, if she had to put up with Kuno much longer she might take matters into her own hands. Maybe she could tell him she'd heard a rumor of a supernaturally beautiful red-haired pig-tailed girl languishing in a Taiwanese brothel and crying for her hero to rescue her.

Fortunately for Ukyo's peace of mind, that very moment was when the last remnant of the pig-tailed girl reentered the café. The chef brightened immensely as she caught sight of him over the shoulder of the oblivious kendoist. Ranma merely looked puzzled at first, no doubt wondering why there was someone else in the booth with Ukyo. Then, as he walked closer and recognized Tatewaki, his face darkened. Ukyo smiled all the wider with happiness and relief, and gave her fiancé a 'thumbs up' gesture of encouragement.

"Fair maiden, is there something—unhand me, cur!" Kuno's awareness of the fact that his date was looking past him, rather than at him, came far too late. Before he could even shift in his seat, much less turn around to look, someone had his shoulder in a grip of iron.

"Sure thing, Kuno," Ranma said, his voice full of mocking good cheer. In a very impressive display of strength, coordination, and control, he pivoted and whipped his arm around, yanking Tatewaki out from behind the table without even disturbing the mound of flowers, much less the table itself or the benches around it. He finished the motion by dropping Kuno into the area he'd just passed through, leaving himself between the kendoist and Ukyo.

"Saotome, you go too far!" Tatewaki thundered. "How dare you seek to chain yet another defenseless damsel to you! The gods themselves weep at the thought of your evil deeds, weep and cry out for vengeance! And the Blue Thunder shall be more than obedient to the mandate of heaven!" He brought his bokken around from 'blustering posture twenty-three' into 'offensive stance seven' and prepared to charge.

"Ha! Bring it on, Kuno—YAAH!" Ranma jumped as the table, hurled by Ukyo's frantic one-armed toss, barely missed him. "What was that for!"

"You jackass, he ain't the only kendo goon here, you know!" Ukyo stood now with her back to Ranma and the upended table between them, making herself into an additional, human shield between her fiancé and the kendo club. She glared at them as fiercely as she could, wishing she could put them in their place through sheer force of will... or at least knock the remaining glasses of water out of their hands. Her desperate counter had stopped the first wave, but in a restaurant there was hardly a scarcity of ammunition. "And maybe he's too stupid to realize it, but none of these guys think the water has to come out of an iron bucket to change you!"

Kuno blinked. "What's that, fair one? Can it be... can that be your true self, speaking past the chains of your enchantment? Can it be that I have done enough damage to the foul sorcerer, and now the cold iron is no longer needed? Only the water itself remains a necessity?"

Ukyo heaved a miserable sigh. "Ranma honey, it's probably a stupid question, considering the way the afternoon is going," she stopped, and snarled so fiercely at the kendoists creeping closer that they froze in their tracks, and one even dropped his glass of water. "But I don't suppose your mom wasn't there when you called?"

"Course she was," her fiancé fired back, just as bitterly. "She's on her way out here right now, an' I think she was even gonna take a taxi to get here quicker. And Ucchan? It's kinda late to be tellin' you this now, I guess, but I used the soap last time I took a bath." He returned his full attention to Kuno. "Okay, _Upperclassman_," he growled. "Let's get this over with!"

-----------------------

Nodoka stepped out of the taxi and stopped, staring at the sight before her. "Driver, this can't be right," she said. "My son told me I was meeting him at a very nice café." The place before her seemed of high enough quality, she supposed, if one discounted the shattered windows or the tables and chairs she could see through them, splintered and scattered throughout the room.

"I'm sorry, ma'am, but this is definitely the Chrysanthemum Garden," the man said apologetically, gesturing to a sign wedged into the wall of a building on the opposite side of the street. Enough of it remained intact and visible to display the name in question. "As to what happened to it... well, you get used to this kind of thing around here."

"Hey, Mom!" As if to confirm that she was at the right spot, her son rose from a bench farther down the road and waved. Nodoka paid the driver and hurried over to meet him.

As she got closer to him, she was able to make out more detail. Her son was smiling brightly, but one eye was twitching. While his hair hadn't come out of its pigtail, Nodoka suspected it wouldn't take much more exertion to see that happen. His clothes weren't actually torn, but they were scuffed and abraded, and in addition seemed to have been subject to several dousings. She wondered for a moment why he hadn't transformed, then remembered that Genma had said something about a countermeasure that Ranma could use to temporarily block the curse if need be. She supposed he must have taken a cue from what happened during yesterday's meeting with Shampoo.

She shifted her gaze away from Ranma to the girl who had been seated next to him, and was now standing and waiting for her cue to bow. The Saotome matron smiled wider and wider as she contrasted the girl's appearance to that of her son. Ranma looked like he'd fought his way through the wringer and escaped relatively unharmed, but this beautiful, elegantly-dressed girl showed only the faintest and most negligible signs of having been through anything at all. "Oh, Ranma, my son, you make me so proud!" she exclaimed.

He blinked. "Er... what was that, Mom?"

"You demolished that café, didn't you?" she asked happily. "Well, not you specifically, but it happened when you were fighting off a rival to protect this young lady. Am I right?"

"H- huh?" the young lady in question asked feebly. She stared at Nodoka as if not believing her eyes, then turned to face Ranma. "Hey, Ranchan, you never said anything about your mom being a mind reader!"

"Uh... she ain't, Ucchan, I guess she just knows me well enough to guess what happened here," he said, giving a feeble laugh.

Nodoka smiled brightly and nodded. Truth be told, considering what had happened yesterday during her introduction to Shampoo, it hadn't been hard to figure out. _'If Ranma had told her of those events, she ought to have seen for herself why I would realize what happened,'_ the Saotome matron thought. _'Probably that means Ranma is keeping Shampoo and this girl discreet from each other as well as from Akane. I shall certainly have to congratulate him on his manliness!'_ And in the meantime, she would keep quiet now about the previous day's adventure. "He gets it from his father," she confided to the girl... Ucchan? Perhaps her son thought unusual names in one's partners were a turn-on. That might be worth looking into, as a suggestion she could make to Akane. "Why, some of my fondest memories are of the epic battles Genma waged for me, back when we were young!"

"Really, Mom?" Ranma asked, giving her a doubtful look. "And... that's something to be proud of?"

Nodoka blinked, clearly at a loss for words. "Of course it is," she said at last. "To fight for the one you love, to strike down those who would use her against you or even claim her for their own, to cast your defiance in your enemy's teeth and then follow it up with a kick—such things are the height of manliness! How can you question that, my son?"

"Cause I seem to recall just three days ago you talking about the 'wild, unprincipled young men and women who run amok through Nerima', and you sure sounded disapproving then."

Nodoka smiled back at him in gentle rebuke. "Yes, of course, dear. That's who you were fighting against, isn't it?"

"You could definitely say that," the girl beside him said dryly. "Nice to see you know better than to lump Ranchan in with jackasses like that, even without being there to see how it all went down."

"Of course I do, young lady. I'm his mother after all." Nodoka blinked. "Oh dear, where are my manners? As I said, I am Ranma's mother, Nodoka Saotome." She bowed.

"A pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Saotome. I'm Ukyo Kuonji," Ukyo said, returning the bow and noting with pleasure that the butterflies seemed to have all flown away. Things had been crazy enough earlier that perhaps it would all be smooth sailing from here on out. "Ranma's fiancée."

Nodoka blinked, fought off a surge of déjà vu, and scrutinized Ukyo's face carefully. No, there could be no doubt—this girl, at least, was no Chinese Amazon. "Excuse me, dear... did you say his 'fiancée'?"

"That's right," Ukyo said. "Ranchan and I met when we were just little kids, when he and his father stopped for a while on their training journey. Some of _my_ best memories are from back then, and all the stuff we got up to together. Before he and his dad left again, my dad fixed up our engagement with Genma."

_'Oh dear,'_ Nodoka thought with some dismay, _'it seems I'm going to have to explain to Ranma that there's such a thing as being too discreet. This girl should have been told of Akane a long time ago...'_ "Wait a moment," she said aloud, as Ukyo's final words finally registered. "Did you say... Genma dearest arranged this?"

"Yep. I sure did," Ukyo replied firmly. "_He_ sure did."

"But... but my son already has an honor-bound fiancée!" Nodoka protested. "Her name is Akane Tendo. The Saotome-Tendo agreement was made before Ranma was even born!"

"I know," Ukyo replied. _'Steady now, don't lose your nerve and don't push too hard. Just tell it like it is.'_ Well, as much like it was as she could manage without completely throwing the panda to the wolves. "Genma said something about that, back when my father first brought up the idea of engaging Ranma and me. And so Dad pushed a little, wanting to see if he was serious about it, and you know what happened? Your husband was ready and willing to shove that agreement with the Tendos off to the side so he could engage Ranma and me instead."

"Young lady, I simply can't believe that that is true!" Nodoka protested. "The Tendo home is where we're staying, and the Tendo engagement is the only one Genma dearest has ever shown any encouragement for! I'm sorry, but I think you must be misunderstanding the way of things here."

_'Crud, she's not taking this as well as I would have liked,'_ Ukyo thought. Bracing herself, she played a trump card. "Mrs. Saotome, I'm sorry, but what I've told you is the truth. Ranma will confirm it."

"Ranma? Is that true?" Nodoka's tone carried equal parts warning, pleading, and worry. She certainly didn't want to hear that this was true, or even somewhat true! But... but if it was, she definitely needed to know... Surely it couldn't be, though, the woman thought desperately. Surely there must have been some misunderstanding somewhere along the line.

"Yeah, Mom. It's true," her son said, quietly, sadly, and reluctantly. But she heard the certainty in his voice as well, and sagged further. What had Genma done?

"But... listen, Mrs. Saotome. You haven't got the whole story, and without that you're not gonna be able to give Genma enough credit." Inspiration had struck Ukyo like a bolt of lightning. She'd taken only a moment to examine the idea, and hadn't found any flaws in it. Taking longer didn't strike her as a good idea, not with the expressions both Saotomes were wearing. As she said that, Ranma's shifted into confusion and Nodoka's into hope. Pausing for one last instant to reflect on the sheer debt Genma was unknowingly piling up toward her, she explained, "I said 'shove the Tendo promise off to the side', but that doesn't mean he just broke it with a snap and forgot about it. What he did was give me a chance to prove that it had been the mistake, that my agreement was a better idea."

"How did he do that?" Nodoka wanted to know.

"Simple." Ukyo chuckled darkly. "He took Ranma and slipped away, left me behind instead of taking me along with them. I had to care enough to track them down after all that time had passed, and forgive Ranma for what turned out not to be his fault after all, and still want to marry him even after all those years of hurt. That was a whole bunch of hard tests your husband laid out for me, Mrs. Saotome, but I'm proud to say I passed them all." There—an explanation that didn't make Genma look too bad to his wife, didn't even mention the small matter of a stolen dowry, and still established her as the rightful fiancée.

"But... I still don't understand. Soun, Nabiki, Kasumi, even Genma... in all this time that I've stayed with the Tendo family, my son is the only one who hasn't outright declared Akane to be his fiancée."

"Really?" Ukyo countered. "I didn't hear her name in that list. Did she ever say that?"

"...No," Nodoka was forced to admit. "Not in so many words. But... but she has shown how she feels, in other ways... at least sometimes..."

"Soun Tendo is your husband's oldest and best friend," Ukyo said, feeling a pleasant sensation of security and control. She was winning this battle, just as somewhere along the way she'd won the battle against her own fear! "How could Genma say anything other than that, while he's actually staying as a guest in the guy's home? And it's not like all that stuff I said for myself didn't also cut the other way. It all applies to Akane too, or at least the gist of it. It's not just me who's had to show whether she'll trust in Ranma, or believe in him, or say she wants him. Or forgive him when it looks like he's done something that hurts, or sacrifice what's important to her for what's important to him. To show she'll go as far as she has to go, to be with him."

The light of understanding had been growing steadily brighter for Nodoka as Ukyo spoke each successive line. With the last one, all the pieces fell into place for the Saotome matron. Offering Ukyo and Ranma a smile that held no hint of her earlier pain and confusion, Nodoka said, "Well then, Miss Kuonji, I'd certainly like to get to know someone who cares so deeply for my son. Shall we find another café and make up for lost time?"

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Genma gave a deep, quivering sigh as he felt the worst of the tension begin to ease. Four days ago, when Akane had thought that each session was going to be different, she hadn't been as far wrong as he let her think. It was true that they spent each afternoon in the same type of contest as they'd had that day, with Akane trying to defend herself from his shiatsu attacks while his aura writhed around her and played havoc with her senses. But what Akane didn't know, what he felt it better not to tell her, was that each day he was manifesting that aura in different ways. Genma figured that by not revealing this, he'd know she was ready for more specific teaching once she realized it on her own.

The demands he was putting himself through were as harsh as any he had in years. In their own way, they might be as difficult as anything Happosai had tasked him with, although Genma's regimen at least didn't carry the possibility of social stigma or jail time. Forcing his energies into so many different coils and configurations, without taking time to let his body get used to each one, more often that not left him stiff and aching and exhausted. It was all the more painful because he had to keep up an appearance of normalcy, lest Ranma figure something out too soon.

At least here, late at night and alone in his room with Nodoka, he could drop the act. His wife wasn't an especially skilled masseuse, but she was happy to put as much effort and time into his back-rubs as she needed. Of course, she had a bit of an ulterior motive in getting his worn and weary body ready for action again, but that was selfishness Genma certainly didn't mind.

Nodoka made a pleased, happy noise as she felt the last knots in her husband's shoulders give way. The muscles lower down in his back had begun to loosen as well, and she shifted her ministrations there to complete the task. Another thirty minutes of this should be enough, she judged. As Genma gave another, deeper sigh, she decided that it would be a good time to open the conversation. After all, she certainly didn't want this massage ending with her husband relaxing so much that he fell asleep. "How was your day today, Genma? Did anything out of the ordinary happen?"

"No, it was just another day. Akane is making good progress," Genma mumbled. "Not as good as Ranma, but I could hardly ask for that."

"Would you say she's more determined lately to practice than she was a little while ago?" his wife asked. "On Monday she didn't seem very eager at all, but since our conversation then it seems as if her zeal and enthusiasm have picked up quite a bit."

"Well, it's not surprising," Genma relayed. "Monday was when we started up her training again after several days off, and she went into it knowing that we were kicking into a higher gear. It's only natural that she felt a little reluctance at the time. I'm just happy to see how well she got past that."

"I'm sure you're doing a good job of teaching her," Nodoka said. "Of training her and preparing her to be a good wife for our son." And on that note... "Well, my day certainly wasn't ordinary." She had held off yesterday on telling him about her introduction to Shampoo; she hadn't quite been sure why, only that her mother's instincts had said it wasn't the right time. And sure enough, the very next day her manly son had introduced another wonderful girl! However, even if he had a third waiting in the wings for tomorrow, she felt like now was the time to reveal what had so far been revealed to her. "Ranma introduced me to Ukyo Kuonji."

The Saotome matron paused and blinked in dismay. In an instant, all her careful work had been undone—Genma's back had gone as rigid as the boards she'd seen him shatter effortlessly. "Genma? Is something wrong?"

Only the fact that his face was buried in a pillow kept Genma's jaw from dropping and his voice from gabbling in panic. Twin impulses warred for dominance in his mind: splash himself and proclaim his cute panda innocence, or somehow push the problem off on Ranma to deal with. After a few seconds, enough rationality returned to remind him that ten days ago he'd bricked over door number one for good and all. It was either leave this for Ranma, or deal with it himself. In any case, he needed to know more about what had happened. "Ah... you met little Ukyo, did you?" he mumbled into the pillow, following it up with a nervous chuckle.

"Not so little now," Nodoka replied. "She's grown into a beautiful young woman. It was quite nice to meet her and begin getting to know her."

_'Begin getting to know her?'_ Genma wasn't sure he liked the sound of that. Maybe he should help Nodoka learn what she needed to know about the chef. "Yes, she's a very good friend to Ranma. I'd say she's as good as the sister he never had."

"Oh really, dear. You'd say that, would you?"

The note of mirth and gentle mockery was so strong in his wife's voice that Genma, against his better judgment, twisted around to look at her. Sure enough, she was smiling the smile every woman knew—whether they had it from birth or it came with the other equipment at puberty, he couldn't say—the one that proclaims, 'weak, helpless little woman will humor big, strong, clueless man'. "Er... did you get some other impression, dear?"

"Well, perhaps," Nodoka allowed, looking as innocent as she knew how. "After all, Ranma did wait to introduce me to her, and to Shampoo as well, until after I reassured him that it's perfectly manly and admirable to take mistresses as well as his wife."

Fighting an impulse to turn back to the pillow and use it to put himself out of his misery, Genma managed, "Y- you did that, did you...?"

"Yes," she replied. "Please don't think I'm angry or upset or disappointed in you, husband, but this was one area where you didn't work things out as well as you meant to. I know it's not what you meant, but Ranma actually got the idea that honor and propriety and manliness required him to only limit himself to one girl! In fact, at first that's what I thought you had deliberately taught him!" Nodoka gave a light, self-reproving little laugh. "But in my defense, that was just from talking to Ranma, not getting any more of the story than just his."

"And... the talk with Ukyo made you think different?" Genma asked, sweating and hoping and praying that Nodoka wasn't leading him into a trap, that she really was as cheerfully oblivious as she seemed to be. His wife had never been particularly deceptive, or good at seeing others' deceptions, and he could only hope that the years apart hadn't changed that.

"Well, of course!" she replied. "Once I heard enough from Miss Kuonji," she stopped, reminded herself that the girl had requested Nodoka call her by her first name, and continued, "I mean, Ukyo, it was easy to see what you'd really been aiming at there. You didn't want her to be a wife to Ranma, since there was already an agreement with a family much older and more honored than hers. If you had meant that, there wouldn't have been any need for those tests she told me about. The engagement would have been sealed and that would have been that. Instead, you put her into a place where she had to choose for herself to put everything else aside for Ranma's sake, to know that she loved him enough to go to such lengths for him. Right now she's certainly determined to be his actual wife, but whether or not she has admitted it to herself, she already knows she loves him enough to simply be a mistress. I believe everything will work out properly, when the time comes."

"I'm glad you think so, Nodoka dear," Genma said, managing to keep enough doubt out of his voice that his lovable ditz of a helpmeet didn't notice the rest. "Er, would that be for both Ukyo and Shampoo?"

"Yes. And that's another thing," Nodoka said happily. "The feelings Ukyo and Ranma have for each other are certainly their own, but it was you who had such a critical role in bringing them together. That's all well and good, for a parent to help out a child that way, but it was also quite nice to see one girl that Ranma had chosen and won all by himself. That was what really reassured me, even before meeting Ukyo, that Ranma had misunderstood what you were trying to say. He thought that just because you never took a mistress you were trying to say he shouldn't either, but deep down inside he knew better."

Genma laughed feebly. Inside, though, he felt more like taking a tear-stained page out of Soun's book. _'What was it I said to him that one time? Oh, right, 'if Ranma and I can get back to my wife, you and I will have the best ally we could hope for in making our dreams come true.' So much for that,'_ he thought gloomily. _'Well, maybe it won't be quite that bad. After all, Nodoka believes honor is a more important part of manliness than virility.'_ That much, at least, he was sure of. And therefore, she ought also to think honoring the Saotome-Tendo pledge would rank higher on the manliness scale than spreading the love around. He just had to make sure she understood the situation here (or at least, as much of it as was safe). "It's true, dear. Ranma has learned some lessons better than I was able to teach them," he said,. "However, there's something I think you should know."

"What is that, husband?"

"That marriage is a team effort," he said pompously. As the faintest wrinkle appeared on Nodoka's brow, he swiftly amended, "Uh, wait, I wasn't saying you needed to know that! I was just trying to lead into what I really meant to say." With his wife restored to smiling placidity, he breathed a deep sigh of relief and continued. "What I was trying to get at is, regardless of how I raised Ranma and what he might have learned from me, and what he might still be learning here and now, it might not matter how willing he is to take a few extra girls under his wing." Genma paused for a moment, wondering absently just when he'd started to pick up Ranma's habit of making bird-, sky-, and flight-related jokes. "If Akane won't accept that, then—"

"Why does everyone keep bringing that up!" Nodoka exclaimed, coming as close to losing her composure as Genma had seen since he and Ranma left home so long ago. "Genma dearest, I _know_! I've been made quite well aware that Akane isn't ready to share yet. I've already reassured our son that I'll teach her better, that she won't still be so selfish by the time they are actually married."

"Y- you have?" Genma gasped. His immediate impulse was to try and talk Nodoka out of this, but it was stymied almost at once by a healthy sense of self-preservation. If Nodoka thought she could, maybe it would be better to let her try and fail. Even if it ended up killing all the affection his wife currently felt for the youngest Tendo, that wouldn't change the important thing here—Nodoka would still support the Tendo engagement wholeheartedly, out of honor and duty.

Somewhere in the back of his mind came a faint sense that there was a flaw in that argument, but before he could pursue the idea Nodoka was speaking again. "Yes. After that was when Ranma decided it was the right time to introduce me to Shampoo and Ukyo."

"I see." Genma took a few moments to think bitter thoughts toward Nabiki. This antic of hers really had not come at a good time. He was beginning to get the impression that there might be things going on behind the scenes that he really needed to catch up on, and he couldn't! The commitment he'd made to the course of training Akane simply wouldn't allow it. And he couldn't back off from that one, not with everything he'd invested into it and all that he hoped—no, _needed_ to get from it. Probably the best thing would be to go further into debt with the middle Tendo, Genma thought unenthusiastically, and let her gather the intelligence he needed but couldn't spare the time for.

He reminded himself that things could certainly have been worse. Nodoka was taking this all much better than he could have hoped for. And even if things did subsequently go wrong, he was pretty sure that he personally wouldn't be blamed. Still, it never hurt to buy a little more insurance. "It may take awhile, dear. You helping Akane to understand these things, I mean," he explained. "Speaking as her teacher, I can say that she is nowhere near as fast or as capable as our boy, not when it comes to learning new things."

"Hmm. I suppose I've seen that myself, in the cooking lessons I gave her during that one visit," Nodoka allowed. She was silent for a few moments, then said, "Well, if she simply takes too long to understand, if it reaches the point where it's not fair to Ranma to delay the marriage any longer, then he can just continue to keep his relationships with Shampoo and Ukyo discreet. It would certainly be better for Akane to realize the truth and accept that she has no right to balk, but failing at that what she didn't know wouldn't hurt her."

Genma thought back over the carefully-constructed house of cards that he, his son, and the Tendos had presented to Nodoka, how she'd so far accepted it without a hitch and even grafted on her own favorable additions. "I'm very glad to hear you say that, Nodoka," he said wholeheartedly.

"But that's settling for second best, and I don't want to do it!" the Saotome matron proclaimed. "I'm going to do my best to help her learn better. And with Ukyo and Shampoo too! You did very well in bringing things as far with Ukyo as they have come, Genma dear, and now you should sit back, relax, and let me take it the rest of the way. I'll help her see the true way of things here, show her what really is the best thing she can give to our son. The best for both him and her."

"If you can do that, I'll be overjoyed and deeply relieved, dear," Genma said. "You've said that I handled things well with Ukyo. Well, it's good to know you have such faith in me, but I'll admit I wasn't so confident myself in my efforts. As you said, she passed every test I put between them, and only came out of it more determined in the end to be with Ranma. I honestly don't know how I would go about telling her that she needs to settle for being his mistress, rather than his wife."

"Oh, Genma, I know that," Nodoka replied. "It's only natural, after all. For fine, delicate, finishing touches like that you need a woman's gentle touch, not a man's bold, strong, wide strokes. Leave it to me; I'll teach her not to let her reach exceed her grasp." She smiled at him, then gently snuggled closer. "After all," she murmured, "if a woman really loves a man, she must be content with what he can give her."

As harsh a pang of guilt as he'd felt in years shot through Genma. It was all he could do not to slide his hand in between Nodoka and himself, to check his torso for an actual bleeding wound. There was silence for several minutes as he forcibly reminded himself that despite the many half-truths and white lies he'd told to his wife, one thing he'd said to her so long ago had been absolutely true: the trip had been for Ranma's own good. If they hadn't left, Ranma wouldn't be anything of who he was today.

It was true, Genma mused, but it was also true that they were nearly at the end of that particular road. All he needed to do was finish this one last sprint, work everything out right in his training of Akane, and he'd win back the lion's share of his son's respect and affection. Those labors were almost at an end... maybe it was time to start thinking about what could lie beyond them?

He blinked away those musings to find Nodoka had flipped him over onto his stomach and resumed work on his back, tracing long, slow, gentle circles there with one hand as she probed for his remaining tension. Her other hand was already working on one of the worst knots.

Genma held silent until she'd teased away all the stress from that one. Before she could move on to another, he turned over on his side so that he could face her. "Nodoka," he said gently, reaching out and taking her hand in his. "As you say, there are things that only a man can give a woman." He paused for dramatic effect. This wasn't something to be yelled into a microphone, after all, but rather to be spoken only loud enough for her to hear. "Would you like me to give you another child?"

Nodoka pulled back, staring at him in wide-eyed wonderment. "Oh, my darling," she breathed. "Would you really do that for me?"

Genma hesitated for a moment to fight off a pang of disquiet. She'd said those exact words, in that exact tone, with that exact look in her eyes, when he'd offered the seppuku promise all those years ago. He pushed aside the memory, reminding himself that this offer surely couldn't twist on him as badly as that one had. "Of course I would, dear."

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Author's Notes

This chapter gave me the chance to do something I've wanted for a long time, and that is speak my mind about the anime screenshot used in the links to the 'Ranma and Akane forever project'. I don't know how widely-used this thing was even in its heyday, and the project has long since died, but the memory of that picture and how it was used has stuck with me for years. Ironically enough, it's actually an excellent shot to use to sum up the relationship between the two—just as long as you understand why Ranma was smiling at Akane and holding that flower, why she was smiling back at him, how quickly her smile disappeared as she got a good look at his face, and what explanation he gave to her to bring the smile back.

With all that in mind, it's pretty easy to see that using that particular screenshot to support a 'Ranma and Akane forever' stance is ignorant at best, deceptive at worst.

Once again I've included a Shakespearean quote in this fic, and once again it's from Love's Labour's Lost. Once again I got the quote from the bartleby(dot)com website for famous quotations. And I'm beginning to get a little unnerved here. Back in chapter 2 when I first decided it would be good to toss in a Shakespearean quote for Kuno to misuse to support his quest for two girls rather than one, I took a look at the long list of William's works available at the website and decided it would be nicely ironic if I could find one in LLL, since the title of that play fit quite aptly with Kuno's situation. The pigtailed girl was now lost to him forever, after all, and all his labor gone for naught (not that it hadn't already been in vain, but still...)

So I looked in there, and sure enough—there was a suitably applicable quote. As I recall, I browsed through a couple of other pages as well, checking quotations from other plays to see if there would be a better choice, but never found one even as good as that one. I went back to the LLL quote to copy it, and realized that the very next quote below that one made a perfect counterpoint for Nabiki to use in describing Kuno. So I grabbed it too.

Then, in chapter 3 I needed a quote relating to doing things in their proper timing. Once again I went to bartleby and browsed through all the available quotes for several different plays. Once again, the best available choice happened to be in Love's Labour's Lost. And now the same thing has happened again! It's downright odd, but at least it doesn't seem threatening. Yet. If copies of that play start randomly turning up in my office and home, expect delays in the release of the last few chapters. Thanks again to everyone at the Refuge who gave C&C.


	9. Sun Gets In Your Eyes

Dream of the Earthbound

A Ranma ½ fanfic by Aondehafka

Disclaimer: the Ranmaverse characters owned by Rumiko Takahashi, and all that obligatory stuff. This story based on the anime, not the manga.

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Chapter 9: Sun Gets In Your Eyes

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Shampoo took a good, long look at her beloved, standing ten feet away from her. His grin was as wide as she'd ever seen. His stance practically screamed confidence and self-assuredness. Even the dust cloud he'd raised as he landed on the rooftop seemed to radiate cocky triumph. She felt her heart quicken and her lips curl into their own smile. "Ranma, look like you have good news," she said. "Is so, yes?"

"Yep." Grinning just a little wider, he said, "Guess what."

"Now that mother know truth is more complicated than just you engage to Akane, she let you off Tendo honor hook?" Shampoo said breathlessly. That was about the best possible news she could imagine.

"Uh, no," Ranma said, his smile diminishing to more normal levels. "Try again."

"Nabiki realize it was wrong to bring mother back into you life when it still kind of dangerous, say she will make up for it by work to keep her safe?" From what Cologne had told her eleven days ago, that seemed like exactly the kind of thing the middle Tendo would consider a reasonable next move. And if this guess too was wrong, it still ought to serve as an honest-to-goodness subtle hint to her beloved about what kind of person Nabiki really was.

"Not that either," Ranma said, his smile fading to little more than a glimmer.

"Hmmm," Shampoo mused. From the way he'd told her to guess he obviously believed she ought to be able to, but she was running out of good ideas. "How about—"

"Actually, why don't I just tell ya." Shampoo was easily the most cheerful of his fiancées, the girl who'd endured the worst setbacks and obstacles yet kept her optimism intact, but that didn't always translate into her providing a similar boost to other people's spirits. _'Hmm... Mom knows the important stuff about Shampoo and Kasumi now, and she likes them both,'_ Ranma mused, distracted momentarily. Maybe his mother could arrange for the Amazon to learn a few lessons from the oldest Tendo daughter. Any girl who could refer to Akane as 'a very sweet girl, just a little high-spirited' definitely knew how to spin things for minimal unpleasant impact.

Then again, he supposed he wasn't the best person to complain, if someone else said what they honestly thought and if it wasn't the most tactful thing imaginable.

He pushed aside those thoughts, remembering the news he'd come here to give her. Grinning a reasonably cocky grin once more, he said, "Better yet, let me show you." He extended his right hand, fingers and thumb held together to form a level plane. As Shampoo watched, sudden understanding in her eyes, his hand remained still... but the air around it now shimmered with turbulent, muted power.

"Ranma, you learn Buzzing Fist!" the Amazon exclaimed, clapping her hands as she gave a couple of wholly gratuitous bounces. She wasn't sure whether to be pleased or disappointed that while Ranma's eyes widened and tracked the motion faithfully, his hold over the technique didn't waver at all. "Shampoo thought for sure it take you at least a little longer, more training together, since there so much other things distract you right now!"

"Heh. You ain't seen nothing yet," Ranma bragged, then turned his attention away from her before the Amazon herself could prove any more of a distraction. For this part he needed all the focus he could manage. The air around his hand stilled for the instant it took to curve his fingers together into a clenched fist. Then he reengaged the technique, this time pouring much more strength into it.

For a moment Shampoo was content to just watch the sight in silence... but her responsibility as his sensei quickly moved her to speech. "Ranma, is nice you can put so much power into it," she said dubiously. "But for this move, control is much more important than how much power you use." She paused again, trying to assemble just what she needed to say with her limited Japanese, to craft a reminder of what she'd told him three weeks ago about the one true advantage of the Buzzing Strike over the Buzzing Fist. The vibrations emanating from the air around Ranma's fist had almost reached the point where his own flesh would take damage from the move... and they were still building. Abandoning the attempt to find a tactful way to warn him off, the Amazon shouted, "Stop, that enough! You going too far, Airen!"

"Well, if you say so..." He met her gaze, wearing again the grin he'd had when he arrived. Then, in one smooth motion, he lifted his fist so that it was pointed directly at her, and whipped his fingers open into the form for a palm strike.

Several seconds later, the last of the gale passed her by. Shampoo stood frozen for a few moments more, then raised a trembling hand and cleared her windblown tresses away from in front of her eyes. Part of her couldn't believe the sight in front of her, couldn't imagine that Ranma was just standing there with that same devil-may-care grin and his hand utterly unmarked by the tempest he'd unleashed. The rest of her, though, whispered back that she'd really known better than to expect anything else.

"It ain't real powerful, obviously," Ranma said after the Amazon let a few more moments pass in stunned silence. "I wasn't going easy on you there; that really is as powerful as I can make the effect right now. Gotta spend most of my concentration on keeping the second layer of the technique intact."

"Ranma mean..." Shampoo gulped breathlessly, then said, "Mean you can do both part at once, on purpose? Mean..." After another bout of struggling for the words in his language, she continued, "To do technique, there is thin, weak layer of still air next to you skin, but that happen automatic. Is not something you have to focus on or decide to make happen, it come natural. But Ranma, you can control that at same time you do other part too? Make the protection part strong enough to not get shred by the bigger power of outside buzzing part?"

"Yep. And it definitely ain't easy," he replied. "I'm not even sure if something like this will ever be useful on its own. But like you said back when we first started on this, the whole Buzzing Fist is really most valuable for teaching principles that lead on to bigger and better things. Same thing with this little revision, I bet."

"Looks like it good for more than just that," Shampoo said, offering him a wan smile. When he blinked at the unexpected reaction, she continued, "Is also good to show me Ranma have truly master this move, pass me by even though we only have meet for train in it that one time. You were right, Airen... maybe it not matter so much if I do a good job with teach you or not. You will still learn anyway."

_'Wasn't she supposed to be happy about this?'_ Ranma thought incredulously. Women—he'd never understand them. "I'm not so sure, actually," he said slowly. "I mean, yeah, obviously I would learn the moves. But saying that you didn't do a good job teaching me, or that it didn't help me to get where I am now... no, that ain't right at all."

"Hmm. Well, I glad to see it work so well for you." Shampoo's smile still contained more than a hint of pain, but there was enough honest happiness for his sake mixed in to keep it from being obvious. "Sorry, Ranma, but I need to take some time to think, about what is best way to train for next move. Since I not expect you master this one so fast, had not done too much of that yet." Technically this wasn't an outright lie, but it skirted pretty close to the edge. She _had_ spent a fair amount of time thinking, or perhaps 'fantasizing' would be the better word, about one possible way to train her husband in the Wind Strike. But now, with what she'd seen and realized this afternoon... well, she was going to have to think long, hard, and seriously before trying to lead Ranma into something like that.

"Heh. You could always blindfold me and walk around me using the technique at its lowest power, while I had to try and figure out which touches were the wind and which were you," Ranma joked. Then he blinked, walked over, squatted down, and offered Shampoo a hand up. "Yo, Shampoo, you okay? It's been a long time since I saw someone facefault hard enough to dent the roof tiles."

Shampoo might have been dazed and confused, but reflex alone was more than enough for her to accept his hand and let him pull her up, in the process squeezing his hand just a little tighter than necessary and settling down slightly closer than his aid alone would have placed her. Neither of these acts provoked a visible reaction from Ranma. Switching to her native tongue, the Amazon muttered, " It's official. I absolutely don't understand what's going on. "

"How's that again?"

"Shampoo just confused, that all." She waved one hand up and down in the limited space between them. "Last time you nearly jump out of skin for not much more contact than we just had. Now you sit there like it no big deal?"

"Geez, throw it in my face why don't ya," he grumbled. He hesitated, trying to decide whether to take this any further or change the subject. The silence stretched for several long moments... and then was broken as Ranma exhaled a loud, gusty sigh. "I won't say it's no big deal," he said quietly. "But I ain't as afraid any more." He offered her the ghost of a smile. "What was that you said to me last time, about the old ghoul? Something about her liking to use the pressure-cooker kind of training."

"Yes, that right."

"Well, the last time we met for this might've been your first time teaching anybody, but you got one piece of your granny's style down real good. I ain't saying it should have been so much of a strain on me," his voice had fallen to a near-whisper, "but it was. You pushed me hard, and... and it was almost too hard. But not quite. It was just hard enough to kick me outta my rut and get me started on something I should've already dealt with. It was—it _is_ a lesson I gotta learn."

While much of this sounded pretty darn good to Shampoo, by no means had it cleared up all her confusion. "But... Ranma say that, say you finally realize you need to learn not be so shy?" She paused, waited for him to grimace and nod, then said as gently as she could, "Then why you not come back more training? I know you is good, Airen, but you not only master Buzzing Fist, you make big change to it. You have to have spent much time working on this on you own. Why you not let me help you with that and with other lesson too, one not have anything to do with Air style, one you say you need to learn?" It was her turn to lower the volume until her companion had to strain to hear her. "One Shampoo so want to teach you..."

"Shampoo..." The girl in question looked up, blinking to see Ranma's face twisted in as much confusion as she'd ever witnessed. Before she could say anything, he continued, "That don't make any sense at all! Okay, yeah, mastering the Buzzing Fist means we won't be doing any more of that particular exercise. But..." He lifted one hand aimlessly, then let it fall. "You're the one making up the training methods. You think I came back here today expecting you to mysteriously start going easier on me?"

"Ummmm..."

"That'd be 'no'." He snorted. "Remember that joke I made earlier, about how you could train me for the Wind Strike? Well... I mean, it _was_ a joke. But... at the same time... I could seriously see ya doing something like that." He clamped his lips shut against the temptation to add something about that not being a suggestion. He was going to face this trial like he'd faced all of the others in his life, head-on with full determination, not trying to weasel his way out of it!

Well, okay, _some_ of the others in his life, Ranma amended.

"That really how you feel, Airen?" Shampoo asked tremulously, light glinting suspiciously at the corners of her eyes.

"Y- yeah," he managed. "I wasn't trying to get out of anything, by practicing and learning the move on my own. Or at least, not anything to do with you."

Shampoo blinked. A large part of her wanted to ignore the qualification and just grab him then and there in her best hug, but another part suggested that that wouldn't be too wise. "What that mean?" she wondered.

Ranma gave her a lopsided smile. "Do ya think things might've been just a little more stressful on me than usual, this past week? It's great to have Mom back in my life, but it makes just about everything more complicated. And I think you know it was pretty dang complicated already!"

"And training is good way to get rid of stress," the Amazon filled in, "and is easier to get quick little times to you self than to get few hours to sneak over and train with Shampoo. That is what you mean when say training on you own let you get out of something?"

"You got it." Ranma heaved a sigh, then smiled at her. "And just so you know, I ain't promising the same thing won't happen again. Today's session may be the only one between you showing me the Wind Strike and me showing it back to you. Prob'ly not, though," he mused. "Prob'ly won't be such a long gap between now and our next session, especially since Mom knows about you and is happy you're there for me."

"And can Ranma maybe say the same?" Shampoo purred, looking up at him through half-closed eyelids.

He wasn't quite sure how she managed that; since they were both sitting down, their heads should have been level. Scraping together his composure and his courage, he replied, "Y- yeah. I can. I am. And..." He sighed and looked away. What he was about to say was going to be hard enough without fighting distraction as well. "And... I'm sorry, for lying to you an' me both last time, when I said I wasn't afraid. That is how it should've been, and how it's darn well going to be," he declared, turning steadfastly back to look at her. She was wide-eyed now, staring at him with a mixture of emotions Ranma couldn't entirely identify. None of them seemed negative, at least.

He waited a while for her to speak, but she just sat there staring at him. "It might be kind of a rocky road getting there," he warned at last. "But I guess you saw that last time. I'm not gonna ask you to go easy on me," this said in a tone that suggested he might not turn away such treatment either, "but I will ask you to keep in mind one thing you said about your granny's favorite method. It's a great way to make good progress quickly, just as long as you don't push too hard too fast."

A wide, trembling smile broke across Shampoo's face like a sunrise. "Ranma mean..." She stopped, swallowed hard, then said, "Mean like maybe walk around you blindfolded, use Wind Strike and own touch against you, and the blindfold you is wearing is own shirt?"

Sweat broke out on Ranma's brow. "Uh... yeah. I think that would qualify."

Shampoo sighed. "Knew my first idea was little too much." By now her smile had steadied and even regained a bit of a sultry note. "Maybe Shampoo can save that plan, modify it for use when Ranma learn Wind Ward."

He gaped. "A- Are you serious? Were ya actually thinking about using that exact method I said?"

"No, you not listen? In my," Shampoo only just stopped herself from saying 'fantasy', "_plan_, Ranma wear shirt over eyes, not chest."

He closed his eyes, as if wanting to save her the trouble of blindfolding him. "Shampoo, I think that would _definitely_ qualify as too much, too fast."

"Ranma already say that. Remember, Airen, I not Akane—I will learn from mistakes. Will listen to you, and not dump more on you than you can take. Shampoo never want to do that again." She grinned at him. "But remember, that not a promise about when we train for technique after next."

"We'll burn that bridge when we come to it," he returned. "But for now, and speaking as someone who's definitely not wimping out but who does have a reasonable idea of where he stands—" He broke off, blinking at the look on Shampoo's face. "Something wrong?"

"Is just... you not really sound like own self there, Ranma."

"Yeah, I know," he grumbled. "Don't sound at all like the guy who let things slide for over a year, never trying to learn any lessons other than stuff that tied to the Art, never even admitting I needed more than that, or thinking about what was really happening, or what was gonna happen farther down the road..." Realizing he was rambling, he cut himself short. "I can't afford that anymore, Shampoo. I prob'ly couldn't afford it even when I wasn't trying to know any better. Can't do anything about the past, though, except try and learn from it and not make those same mistakes again."

"That sound good to me," she said quietly. "I trying to do that too, you know."

"I know." He smiled at her. "And... and I'm grateful."

"Ranma..." she breathed. Shampoo hesitated just a moment longer, then made her decision. Slowly, deliberately, gently, she closed the distance between them and reached her arms around him in a warm embrace. She felt him stiffen and his heart begin to pound like a bass drum, but this time his response didn't bother her at all. It would be nice if he'd immediately hugged her back, but now she was certain that that—and more—would come in its time.

She leaned her head against his shoulder and closed her eyes. "Is this okay, Ranma?" she murmured. "Not push too hard, but not let you off easy either. You admit it now, you know these are lesson you need to learn." He began to relax against her, ever so slightly. "Shampoo think maybe what she do in the past made it harder for you. For that, I am very sorry." Much of the tension had left him now. "But if we both try to do better, is not too late." As if answering her unspoken question, his right hand came slowly and hesitantly up, to rest on her back with the gentlest of touches. Shampoo sighed, luxuriating in the contact and letting the embrace go as long as she dared. "Thank you, Airen," she said as she finally pulled back.

"Thank you, too," Ranma said, giving her shoulder a tentative squeeze before returning his hand to his side. He summoned up the fortitude to grin at her and say, "Lemme tell ya, Shampoo, I can sure say now that it's better to have you for a sensei than your granny."

Shampoo's laughter rang like golden bells. "Here and now, even she would probably let you off hook for say that. But I really glad to hear it, Ranma." After pausing for thought for a few moments, she continued, "You remember little while ago when you show me you had make new move from Buzzing Fist? Did you see that I was little bit sad as well as happy?"

"Yeah," he replied, wondering why she'd brought it back up. "Wasn't that cause you were thinking I'd worked so hard on my own because I wanted to get out of training with you?"

"No," she answered, surprising him. "Not at first, anyway. Thought of that little bit later. You know what hit me first?"

_'Let's see, girls often think they're making sense when they're really not...'_ "You... thought you weren't being a good sensei because I only needed one session of instruction to be able to move past you?" he hazarded a guess.

Shampoo stuck her tongue out at him. "No. Well, not really. That was maybe part of it, that Ranma learn so quick, student not need teacher for solve any problems or even give hints to help him past roadblock." She met his gaze squarely, this time without any pain or disappointment. "But that was not what really hurt. I was wrong, but for that time, felt like only things I had to give you was just for being Amazon. Not for being Shampoo."

"... I'm not sure I understand," Ranma said, sparing only a little bit of concentration for the words. The rest of his mind was trying to do just that—to understand, to unravel the mystery of what a girl really meant when she was saying something so obviously important to her but unknown to him. "How could you possibly think that? I mean... you've given me lots of stuff. Usually you were _able_ to because you're an Amazon, but that ain't the _reason_."

Shampoo drew her breath in sharply as she considered those words. "Maybe..." she said at last, "maybe Ranma understand better than I did. Need time to think about this, Airen."

"Heh. You and me both," he replied. "We've been here for way less than an hour, and I've already got enough stuff to think about over two or even three flights. Maybe we better stop now before we overflow our brains."

"Is very good idea." Shampoo blinked as one of her own struck her, the thought popping forth before her awareness exactly as if it had overflowed, fully-formed, out of some mental well. "And Shampoo have one too. We talk long enough, Ranma; can use rest of time to fly. Shampoo will use Wind Strike at low level to give you good winds to ride and bad winds to fight, get you used to technique that way. Is like I already do one time, only now I know move better and can make better challenge for you. Is not even very far from what Great-Grandmother do when she train me." It would be significantly less stressful on him than that method had been on her, but as Shampoo saw it the last thing Ranma needed was to be getting unnecessary stress from her. Plus, her control was hardly equal to Cologne's; she might end up seriously hurting her beloved if she tried to imitate the Matriarch's method too closely.

"Sounds good to me," Ranma said, firing off a grin nearly as cocky as the one he'd arrived with. He gestured to the flask of water resting against Shampoo's hip. "You wanna do the honors?"

-----------------------

Yuka stared contemplatively down into her milkshake. It almost felt like a shame to drink it, rather than take it home and put it in the freezer to be preserved for posterity. After all, she could easily buy another for actual consumption with her own money—but being treated to something for free by Nabiki Tendo was nearly unheard-of.

Looking up from the treat and across the table, she noted that Sayuri seemed to be trying to make the most of the occasion in a different way. The girl was wolfing down her sundae at a rate that reminded Yuka of the stories Akane told of Ranma's eating habits. _'Does she actually think Nabiki will buy her another if she looks like she enjoyed the first one enough?'_ Yuka wondered. _'Wow, if she can be that optimistic she must be all the way over the trauma from that stupid Ghost Cat.'_

She turned her attention to the table's fourth and final occupant, her other best friend and a girl who'd seen more weirdness and extremes of fortune than the rest of them combined. Akane didn't seem unhappy, Yuka noted, but her friend wasn't nearly as cheerful as she usually was when it was just the three of them out for a fun time. The best word that came to mind was 'reserved'. It wasn't as bad as 'unhappy' or any of its ilk would have been, but Yuka still didn't think it was a particularly good state to be in when you were with friends.

"So how are things going with your training, Akane?" she asked. "You're awfully quiet. Is it because you're worrying what Mr. Saotome will say about you putting things off with him today?" She couldn't remember whether Akane was supposed to go straight home after school to train even on a Saturday, but considering what she'd heard of Mr. Saotome, it didn't seem unlikely.

"Huh?" Akane said, blinking. "What was that?" After her friend had repeated the question, she said, "No... not really. I mean, I wasn't worrying about that. My Saturday afternoon sessions are at the same time as all the others, and I'm sure we won't be here long enough to make me late for that. But the training is what I was thinking about." It had been a full week now since she and Genma had resumed working together, a week of greater hurt than Akane had known in her entire life. It would be nice if she could say that she'd seen the kind of improvement she deserved for all her suffering, but as far as she could tell the only things she'd gained were greater endurance and a higher pain threshold.

She wasn't about to work this hard just so Shampoo could kick her around more before winning the fight.

"You're brooding again, little sister," Nabiki chided. "How much more do you want me to do, here?"

"Huh?" Akane repeated, blinking once more.

"I'm already spending my Saturday afternoon by inviting you and your friends out for ice cream, and even paying for it. And that's still not enough to raise your spirits?" Nabiki shook her head sorrowfully, raised her eyes to the heavens, and gave the best impression she could manage of Genma's voice. "Oh, what an ungrateful sister I've raised!"

This at least succeeded in provoking a snort of laughter from Akane. "Yeah, right, Nabiki. Seriously, though, why _did_ you invite us all here?" It was a nice enough café, but she didn't see what was special enough about it to justify coming this far out of their way for a visit. The ice cream had been tasty and the prices reasonable, but the only real difference between this place and the ones they more often frequented was its distance from their normal stomping grounds.

"What kind of a question is that?" Nabiki asked. "Can't I just want to spend some time with my little sister, and do something nice for her?"

Akane's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Okay, now I really mean it, Nabiki. Why did you want to come here?"

The middle Tendo traded her melodramatic mask for a smirk. "All kidding aside, it really is because I want to do something nice for you," she said smoothly. It wasn't even really a lie, at least if one considered 'keep Ranma tied to you by any means necessary' to be nice. "But I also need some help from you."

"Oh really," Akane replied. At least this time she'd gotten a free ice cream out of whatever the deal was. "Well, let's hear it."

"Have you noticed how Kuno has been more of a nuisance lately? How he's been more determined, more in your face, how he's taken up more of your time? It's only natural, after all—his pigtailed girl has been gone for two months now. As soon as she disappeared, it was bound to mean one of two things: either he'd take more and more attention away from you as he searched for her, or it would be 'out of sight, out of mind'. Either you'd get some relief, or things would get even worse when he chased you all the harder to make up for losing his other one true love." Nabiki shrugged. "Except we all know that with your luck, only one of those was ever really a possibility."

"You're saying that's why he's been coming on so much stronger lately?" Akane queried. She stopped, and thought back over what had happened at school during the last few weeks. Sure, she'd had to pound Kuno every few days, but... "But, Nabiki... he hasn't. I mean, I can't remember him being any more of a pest than usual."

"You are correct!" Nabiki stated, raising her spoon into the air with a flourish. From the corners of her eyes she watched Yuka and Sayuri trade glances. Good—they'd noticed the out-of-character theatrics, and were even becoming a little suspicious as a result. All the better then, for the next step. "Why do you suppose that is, Akane?"

Akane heaved a sigh. "Nabiki, if you're trying to make me wish I was back home training with Mr. Saotome, you're doing a good job." It gave her a bit of satisfaction to say that; since Nabiki didn't know the true nature of her training, she couldn't know the real impact of the statement. It felt good to say something Nabiki didn't really understand, for a change. "Maybe you could just tell me straight out what you're trying to get at?"

"Okay, fine." All traces of silly humor vanished from Nabiki's face, returning it to its typical expression, if such a word could be used for what was really an expressionless mask. She carefully thought back to the encounter with Cologne of two weeks past, letting just enough of the emotions it had spawned past her control to twist her pretty features with weariness, discomfort, and a touch of fear. "I've been running interference for you, Akane. Me and my network are the reason he hasn't been worse for you lately. And it's basically reached the point where we can't keep that up without active help from you." She sighed and looked away, using the moment as a chance to examine Yuka and Sayuri. She allowed herself a hint of cold satisfaction as she saw that their suspicion had shifted into understanding—or at least, they believed they understood. The two had swallowed her tale hook, line, and sinker. It was the same old story, Nabiki thought cynically. Show a little obvious false emotion, then show something that looks real and would explain the earlier façade, and nearly the whole world will fall all over themselves to believe. And if that technique hadn't worked, she had an entire mental arsenal of others at her disposal.

Even Happosai could be tricked or pacified, at least by someone who was sufficiently young, hot, and female as well as clever. If there was anyone in Nerima other than Cologne that she couldn't handle this way, Nabiki hadn't met them yet. Nor did she want to. It was going to be hard enough, skating around the damnable old hag and keeping enough distance between them while still getting what she wanted. But come hell or high water, Nabiki Tendo would do it. She wasn't about to let Ranma Saotome slip away, wasn't about to let the Amazons or anyone take something that belonged to her! So Cologne didn't want to learn of any more interference from her? That could be arranged.

"That's why you invited us all out here?" Sayuri asked. "To ask us for help in keeping Kuno off Akane's back? You can count on us, Nabiki, Akane!"

"Yeah!" Yuka chimed in. "Are we going to discuss strategy now? Is that why you wanted to come all the way out here, so that there wouldn't be anybody we know around to overhear?"

"Yes, that's right." Nabiki heaved a weary sigh. "If Kuno were to hear about this, it would destroy any chance of success. It's going to be complicated and hard enough as it is. Frankly, even with all of us working together it's not certain that everything will work out just right." There—her own backside was now covered. When her machinations resulted in Kuno becoming more interested rather than less, when he actually did what she said he'd already done and pushed aside the memory of a long-lost redhead to focus solely on Akane, when Tatewaki Kuno became troublesome enough that Akane needed Ranma to once again rescue her... it would just be one more of those Nerima things. Certainly nothing that anyone would lay at her feet. After all, she had done the best she could to _help_ her sister.

"Do you really think you can do it, Nabiki?" Akane asked, a hopeful smile beginning to spread across her features. "It would be wonderful if I didn't have to put up with him any longer. And thanks for keeping him off my back as much as you have."

"You're welcome, sis," Nabiki murmured with not a shred of remorse. "As for a permanent solution... well, like I already said, all we can do is try. I think it's a good chance, but you've got to know as well as I do that there's no certainties in this town." Or at least, none that she felt like sharing with Akane at the moment. Nabiki felt certain that a few well-timed chances to play the hero would get Ranma thinking more favorably about her sister. _'After all, he won't get to prove how strong and macho he is by rescuing Shampoo_ _with any real frequency.'_ It certainly wouldn't solve all the recent problems in one fell swoop, but it would be a good start.

"Then let's get started!" Akane said eagerly. "Have you already got a plan, or are we going to think something up now?"

"I have a few ideas," her sister demurred. "But I thought we should talk them over and get everyone's opinions before deciding on anything final." Which would leave her yet another layer of deniability once things apparently spiraled out of control. It probably wasn't necessary, but insurance that didn't cost you anything was never a bad idea. "Okay, for starters—" Her mouth clamped closed with an audible click.

"For starters...?" Akane prompted. When her sister remained silent, she said, "Um, Nabiki...?"

"Akane..." This was Sayuri, not exactly whispering but certainly not speaking in a normal tone of voice. "Behind you."

"Huh?" It dawned on Akane that her sister wasn't actually looking at her any longer; Nabiki's gaze was fixed at something over her shoulder. She twisted around just in time to see two familiar figures disappear into a booth on the far side of the café. After her own moment of shocked silence, Akane got to her feet. "Excuse me," she growled, turning to pursue them.

Nabiki's hand shot out with speed that was truly impressive for a non-martial artist, and clamped down on her sister's arm with equally impressive force. "Hold it, Akane."

"Excuse me!" Unlike her last use of the phrase, there wasn't even a hint of politeness in her tone now. "Do you really expect me to just sit here and not even wonder what the heck Ukyo's doing with Mrs. Saotome?"

"Of course not," Nabiki riposted, not relaxing her grip one bit. "I expect you to not screw up this opportunity." In the privacy of her own mind, the middle Tendo thought that it was about damn time they had another one of those coincidences that used to happen all the time, where random chance helped her little sister's chances with Ranma. She didn't know yet whether this meeting would be good news, bad, or indifferent; considering how many loose screws Ranma's mother had it could conceivably be all of the above. But it was certainly good news that she had the chance to get a secret ringside seat to whatever new development this was.

Aloud, she continued, "They didn't notice us, which is frankly better luck than I would have expected. We're not about to waste it. We're going to sneak over to the next booth and listen in on their whole conversation, not butt in and throw away the chance of getting inside information." When Akane still looked hesitant, the middle Tendo snapped, "For goodness' sake, think about it! Obviously Ukyo has already introduced herself to Mrs. Saotome, so you can't stop them from meeting to talk. But you can find out what Miss Kuonji has to say."

"Well, maybe," Akane said with supreme reluctance. "Fine, let's just go over there." She turned, only to be pulled up short by her sister's grip. "Nabiikiii!"

"Not until you promise you'll sit quietly and listen, not explode and blow our cover," Nabiki said forcefully, staring her sister in the eye. "I mean it, Akane. Give me your word of honor."

After taking a few deep breaths, Akane said, "All right. I promise."

_'Interesting,'_ Nabiki mused as she let go and rose to her feet as well, followed quickly by Sayuri and Yuka. _'It looked like Akane actually thought it through and made a rational decision even when she didn't like it, rather than me having to trick her or push her into it by sheer force of will. That's a switch.'_ Nothing more was said as the foursome sneaked quietly over to their own booth and settled down for some serious eavesdropping.

-----------------------

"This is a nice place, Auntie," Ukyo said. "Thanks for inviting me here."

"You're welcome, dear. Kasumi introduced me to it last week." Nodoka smiled faintly. "She put special emphasis on how quiet and out-of-the-way it was, that you could be certain of a peaceful afternoon if you went here."

"Hmm," Ukyo murmured dubiously, remembering how true that hadn't proved to be for the late, lamented Chrysanthemum Garden. Quiet and out-of-the-way or not, it wouldn't surprise her if history repeated itself here. Hence, the chef's incongruous kimono-with-battle-spatula ensemble. She even had one razor-sharp mini-spatula hidden up a sleeve within easy reach, which could be used to slit the bottom sides of the kimono for improved mobility. Ukyo really hoped it wouldn't come to that, of course. She wasn't sure why Nodoka had invited her to this tête-à-tête, but she certainly wanted to make a continued good impression rather than a bad one. Hopefully if anything did blow up around them, Nodoka would forgive whatever lapse in propriety was needed since Ukyo damn well wasn't going to risk the woman getting hurt. "A nice, peaceful afternoon would be great."

The waiter arrived then with their tea. After each had taken a few sips and found it quite enjoyable, Ukyo spoke again. "Was there anything in particular you wanted to talk about, Auntie? Or did you just want to visit for a while?"

"A little of both, really," Nodoka replied. "Last Saturday made a nice start, I thought, but it certainly didn't tell me everything about you, and how things are between you and my son."

_'That must be why she invited just me this afternoon, instead of me and Ranchan.'_ Ukyo said a quick prayer that she wouldn't let anything slip that would somehow make things harder for Ranma. She wished she'd made more time the past week to talk to him about just what was safe to present to Nodoka, and what wasn't. A moment's thought along those lines provided a possible solution, a chance to pass the time in conversation that wouldn't be dangerous at all. "Would you like to hear some stories from when he and I were kids together?"

The Saotome matron blinked, then beamed. "Oh yes, please!" She'd missed so much of Ranma's life, almost his entire childhood, and Nodoka could think of no more pleasant a way to spend an afternoon than getting a little bit of that back.

"All right," Ukyo said with a smile. _'Let's see, should I start with how we first met, or jump straight into the business with the Gambling King?'_ The former would seem like a more logical place to start if she was just trying to share Ranma's early history with Nodoka, but the latter would give her an opening to segue into hinting to Nodoka about the kind of treatment her son all too often received at the hands of the Tendos. Ukyo didn't doubt that they were trying to put on a good face now that Ranma's mother was actually living with them, but she also didn't doubt that they slipped up in little ways from time to time. Give Nodoka a few subtle clues by way of warning, and she'd probably see the reality behind the mask a lot quicker than she otherwise would. And that would be good for everyone, or at least everyone who deserved a good outcome. Even Akane would ultimately be happier not to be in a relationship that wasn't good for anyone, though Ukyo supposed it might take a while for that to come about.

Still, she realized, there was no hurry. No need to jump straight into that story; she'd begin at the beginning. "It all started when—"

"Actually, dear, I'm sorry, but could we save these for next time?" Nodoka spoke the words with genuine distress. In the first delightful shock of realizing she could take back a bit of her son's past, she'd quite forgotten that she'd come here with an important purpose for his future. "I really do want to hear all about it, but I think we need to discuss some other important things today."

Ukyo blinked. "Like what?"

_'So much for leading into it subtly and gently,'_ Nodoka realized ruefully. She'd spent a week thinking about how to go about this, had put a great deal of effort into coming up with the right way to gently ease into the subject, and now, thanks to three minutes of blindsided blundering, the jig was more or less up. Ukyo would know the innocent-sounding questions were much more significant than they appeared on the surface. Nodoka made a mental note to apologize to Genma, and to do better than this with Akane.

She took a sip of tea to buy herself time to think. Perhaps she could improvise questions that, while obviously significant, led in a different direction than would seem obvious to Ukyo? Nodoka continued to sip and think furiously. At last, she set down her empty cup and said, "Really I just wanted to talk to you about your and Ranma's future."

Ukyo smiled so widely that were it not for her martial artist's resilience, her cheeks might have cracked. Not 'your future and Ranma's', but 'your future with Ranma'! With great effort, she stopped herself from drifting off into a happy little daydream. That could wait for later this afternoon (except that there probably wasn't going to be anything 'little' about it). As she thought about how to respond, Ukyo remembered one fact that allowed her to calm down from the worst of the giddy exhilaration. "We haven't talked a whole lot about it, Auntie," she said. "You know things are kind of complicated in Ranchan's life at the moment."

"I know, dear. I'm just asking for your thoughts right now."

The chef almost didn't know where to start. However, there was one aspect of her dreams that had been fuzzy for a long time but had recently become a lot more solidly defined. "Well, for a while I wasn't sure whether it would be better for us to settle down in one place for me to run my restaurant, or hit the road and serve okonomiyaki out of a yattai. There were pros and cons to both, you know? Looking at it from my side, staying in one place would mean more money and a chance to make better connections, friends and regular customers. But going on the road would give us more variety out of life, a chance to always see something new, and for that matter spread the legend of Ukyo's okonomiyaki farther and faster."

"And what about Ranma?" Nodoka interjected.

"Both of those arguments apply to him too, right? More cash and more stability, or the wind in his hair and new sights every week. And of course there's stuff either way that applies particularly to him," Ukyo explained. "Like, what would be the impact on his growth in the Art from either choice? If we settle down in one place, it makes it easier for strong challengers to find him, but if we're always moving it makes it easier for him to find them." She shrugged. "That's really not a question I can answer, Auntie, and even if I could it wouldn't be my place to do it. You'd have to ask him."

The older woman smiled as brightly and warmly as she could. That had been a very good answer. All the same, her motherly instincts felt like her guest might have been holding back, a little. It almost felt like Ukyo had meant what she said about it being Ranma's question to answer, not hers, but that the chef thought she knew the answer anyway. "I understand, dear. All the same... speaking off the record... what do you think he'd say?"

"Well... off the record of course..." Ukyo smiled back. "I think he'd say the right thing to do was put down more permanent roots. He could still go on training trips when he needed to, but I think Ranma honey would want to have a home to come back to." She winked. "A home within easy jumping distance of his mother and father."

A pang of intense happiness and sorrow shot through Nodoka. That was a very lovely picture Ukyo had painted. But all the motherly love in the world couldn't change one thing—it was the Tendo pledge that carried the greatest weight of honor and that must be upheld. It was the Tendo home where Ranma was and would be making his, and the sooner Nodoka could arrange things satisfactorily with all the girls in her manly son's life, the better.

Still, it was nowhere near time to move the conversation to that point. "That does sound nice, Ukyo. What about other things?"

Ukyo blushed and looked down at her hands, twiddling her fingers together. "Well... do you mean, like, kids?" When Nodoka nodded and gave her an encouraging smile, she continued, "Obviously that's something I'd _definitely_ want to talk to him about. But... for me personally... I wouldn't really want to wait very long."

Nodoka's smile held a definite 'that makes two of us' quality. "And having a stable, settled-down home would be better for that as well."

"Yeah, probably so." _'Not like I'd know that from personal experience, but it seems likely.'_

"What about college?" Nodoka asked next. "Is there a school you have your eye on, or were you planning to attend at all?"

"That'd be 'no' to both questions," Ukyo said, hoping this wouldn't count against her. "Going to college wouldn't give me anything I need, at least not without taking away time from stuff that's more important. I've already got my restaurant up and running, and I've learned everything I need to keep it going and growing."

"Really?" Nodoka asked, impressed despite herself. "Even the business and management skills you would need to expand from one restaurant to a chain?"

Ukyo smiled and shook her head. In truth, she'd considered that option in the past, but had decided she didn't want to go down that road. "I've got no interest in expanding like that. My Art is all about making the perfect okonomiyaki, and how that ties into martial arts. Overseeing a bunch of restaurants... no, that's not part of the picture. I'm going to make Ucchan's the best place it can be, and that da-..., er, darn well means not watering down the name with a bunch of half-hearted franchise joints."

"Oh, really? You seem to have things well planned out," Nodoka observed.

"Well, I have spent plenty of time thinking about it," the chef replied. "And anyway, this is the way the Kuonjis have done business for generations. Sometimes on the road, sometimes in their own place, passing along the Art and the love of it to family, but never letting strangers drag along on our coat-tails. And when they try to horn in on us..." Ukyo's attention drifted away from Nodoka to memories of two so-called kings, one of the crepe variety, the other a playing-card wannabe. She chuckled darkly.

The bloodthirsty grin on her guest's face wasn't particularly disconcerting to Nodoka, but it did reinforce the conclusion she'd already reached. "So in effect you've already got the basics of your life and your future planned out," she summarized, "with some flexibility built in for Ranma to have a say in things."

"I'd say that sums it up pretty good," Ukyo said proudly. She was certain neither Akane nor Shampoo could offer anything remotely like as good or as well-planned.

"Ukyo dear..." Nodoka braced herself to push along to the heart of the matter. "Has it occurred to you that there's one element you've overlooked?"

Ukyo blinked. "No, Auntie. What's that?" Before Nodoka could answer, she said, "Is it exactly what Ranma honey would be doing during all this? I have thought about that, of course, but that's another one of those 'you'd have to ask him' things. He could work in the restaurant with me, at least some times; it wouldn't be hard for someone like Ranchan to turn that into its own kind of training. And like I already said, he can do other stuff outside too, go on training trips, seek out challenges, grow in his Art as I grow in mine. We'd each be helping the other, which," she narrowly stopped herself from saying 'is the best part of marriage'. Hearing that would probably just hurt the woman who hadn't had a chance at that for herself. "Which is what I want," she concluded.

"And there's certainly nothing wrong with the things you've told me," Nodoka reassured her. "At least, not with one tiny little change. One oversight that you would have to correct."

"Um, okay," Ukyo said. "What oversight?"

"Propriety," Nodoka answered. When her guest just blinked at her, she explained, "Think about it. In that picture you outlined, it would be you owning and operating the business that supports your family, leaving Ranma free to help or do his own thing as he wishes. And that simply isn't the right way of things between a husband and a wife! You know as well as I do that Ranma is a true man, but I don't think you've quite realized that things as you'd have them would make it look like he was dangling off your apron strings. A wife can certainly keep track of the household finances, but it simply isn't right that she should be the one ultimately responsible for generating them."

Ukyo gritted her teeth together, refusing to remind Nodoka that, according to Ranma, the woman herself had done exactly that. She certainly didn't want to send this discussion spiraling out of control, and an accusation like that might well do the trick. Besides, she realized after forcing herself to cool down, it wasn't necessarily true. Nodoka had made her investments to support _herself_ while her menfolk were gone, and from what Ranma had told her it didn't sound like the Saotome matron was going to use her wealth to sustain Genma in the lap of luxury.

No, Ukyo thought, there was a better objection to make. "Aren't you selling Ranchan a little short there? All he would have to do is win a couple tournaments every few months, and he'd pull down enough cash to make my income look like chicken feed."

"Ukyo dear, it really is the principle of the matter that we're talking about here," Nodoka said earnestly. "It is acceptable for a single woman to earn her own livelihood, even own and operate her own business... but for a wife, it simply wouldn't be right. This is something you would have to sacrifice, if you were married to my son."

"Sacrifice how? You can't mean give it up. You're talking about giving it to Ranma, right? Saying it's _his_ place, and I just work for him."

"Yes, that's right," Nodoka said, hoping she had read the girl correctly. If Ukyo should just shrug and say 'no problem', it would make it much harder to convince the girl of her ultimate message.

Ukyo stared back, neither flinching nor giving ground. "If Ranma's name is on the ownership papers but I'm the one doing all the cooking, making the decisions, actually _running_ the business... what difference does it make? Okonomiyaki is my Art, not his, and telling him he has to learn enough to take over for real would be hurting him. Neither of us wants to do that, Auntie."

"No, we don't. And for your first question, the difference is what I said before. It's a matter of propriety," Nodoka replied, breathing a little easier now. "Shouldn't I be the one asking you that question? Why would it matter to you, if Ranma were the owner and ultimately responsible for everything, if he allowed you to make the actual day-to-day decisions?"

_'Screw it, the kid gloves are coming off,'_ Ukyo thought grimly. Staring into Nodoka's eyes, she pronounced, "I already hurt him like that once. I'm damn well never doing it again."

"W- What?" Nodoka asked feebly, knocked further off-balance by that response than she had been when Copycat Ken kidnapped her. "Hurt him? How?"

"There was a time when I lost confidence in that part of myself," Ukyo explained. "Lost all faith in my okonomiyaki skills, and because of that I tried to make myself into nothing more than a traditional, demure, subservient little wife-to-be for Ranma. I thought it was all that I had left." She grimaced bitterly. "I was wrong. I actually hurt him, by trying to deny that huge part of who his oldest friend and fiancée was. I'm ashamed of that, and I'm certainly not going to do it again." Her blue-green eyes shone like St. Elmo's fire upon the deep.

"And you really think that doing what propriety demands would hurt him like that again?"

"I know it. Okonomiyaki is in the bedrock of my soul, not his. He'd never want to do anything that even looked like taking it away from me. Ranchan has always told me that he likes me just the way I am, and that that's how he wants me to stay." Ukyo shrugged off an odd twinge of discomfort. Had she more control and knowledge of chi, she might have identified it as a spike of mingled jealousy, bitterness, and hurt, originating from one booth over. But Ryoga Hibiki was the only teenager in Nerima who could have sensed that truth, and he was miles away at the time.

"I'm glad to hear that, Ukyo. Please understand, I haven't been saying any of these things to hurt you," Nodoka declared. "I'm trying to help you and my son both, to show you that there's a better way for you. A way that fits better in your life and his, that allows both of you to be who you really are, together, without damaging the honor of the pledge that was made before Ranma was even born."

"That would be the promise with the Tendos," Ukyo said, her eyes narrowing. "Where exactly are you going with this?"

Nodoka allowed herself a quiet, genteel sigh. In her imagination, things had gone much more smoothly than this. However, this was only a first attempt, at something for which there wasn't any real hurry. "I mean that both you and my son would be happier and better off if you were his mistress rather than his wife." Seeing every muscle tense in the young woman across from her, except for the one next to her eye that was ticking furiously, Nodoka elaborated, "You wouldn't lose anything of substance, Ukyo, please understand that! You would still have his name, and so would the children you give him. I'd gladly adopt you into the Saotome family register." In fact, she'd insist on it if need be, not that Nodoka thought insisting would be necessary. "Ranma and you would still share just as much of everything that matters to you."

"How can you say that?" Ukyo exclaimed, only just managing not to shout the words. "Share? Yeah, that's right, but I'd also be _sharing_ him with someone else! With whoever is supposedly good enough to come in as his official wife!"

Nodoka stared steadily back at her. Speaking with both sympathy and steel, she replied, "And is that really any different from being his wife and sharing him with his mistresses?"

"Mistress_es_? Plural?" Ukyo took a few deep, ragged breaths. "Mrs. Saotome, I don't think—" She cut herself off, remembering once again that it wasn't safe to speak too much for Ranma when he wasn't around, that she had to keep quiet about things they might not be able to afford his mother hearing.

"Please," Nodoka said quietly, but no less firmly, "you have to understand. My son is a true man, enough of one that it just wouldn't be right to tell him he has to limit himself to only one woman. Legally he can only marry one, and honorably that must be Akane. The pledge to her family carries the greatest weight of honor and must be the one upheld." Deciding that she wasn't above a little emotional blackmail, Nodoka added, "You told me last time how much you love my son, Ukyo. That you had passed my husband's tests, had proved you would go as far as you needed to be with Ranma. This may not be exactly what you planned on or hoped for, but loving someone means you're willing to do what's best for them."

"I know that," Ukyo said with difficulty, fighting down the negative emotions. "Don't ever think I don't."

"Very well. Taking everything into consideration, I don't think something like this is much to ask, is it?" Nodoka replied. Looking down, she murmured, "Not nearly so hard as saying goodbye to your son and husband for so very long..."

Ukyo privately felt that Nodoka was as big an idiot as Genma for not insisting they take her along on that trip, but without actually saying that it was awfully hard to argue the point. "I understand where you're coming from, Auntie," she said as steadily as she could. "But there's no way I can just swallow something like this. I need time to think things over." Time to talk to Ranma and try to figure out how to deal with this latest twist. "And I hope you'll forgive me if, the next time we talk, I try to convince you to see things my way."

"Of course. Shall we say goodbye for the afternoon, then?" Nodoka asked, doing her best to radiate concern and warmth so that Ukyo would know she wasn't angry, offended, or discouraged. She hadn't made as much progress as she had hoped for, but at least it was a start. "And I'll always be willing to listen to anything you have to say."

"Thank you." Ukyo stood up... and her resolve to get out without saying anything more failed her. Right here, right now, Nodoka needed to know at least a little something concrete. Looking the older woman in the eye, she said, "Because except for Kasumi, the Tendos are a bunch of hypocrites who wouldn't know honor if it bit them in the ass. Akane's broken the engagement to Ranma four times that I know of, and each time they just expected him to crawl back to her when she got over the worst of her snit." Realizing that she was on the verge of saying things that might have a negative impact on Ranma, not just the people who were taking unfair advantage of him, Ukyo clamped her lips shut, gave a clipped nod, and hurried out of the café.

-----------------------

Not until Nodoka had exited as well did Nabiki unclench her grip from her sister's arm, the warning grasp that she'd taken up again as soon as the woman mentioned Ukyo's and Ranma's mutual future. For a moment she wondered bitterly whether this had been worth it, whether the advantage she would gain from getting the inside scoop would really outweigh the increased difficulty that was sure to result from Akane hearing all of that as well. She took a few deep breaths and banished the doubt. She could handle Akane; she'd been doing it for years. _'After all, all it took was my hand on her arm to keep her from breaking her promise and charging over there anyway.'_

Akane glanced down at her arm as Nabiki released her grip and pulled away. She frowned at the sight of the marks her sister's tightly-clenched fingers had left. There were even going to be a couple of bruises unless Akane missed her guess... and she hadn't even noticed until now. The last time she'd even been dimly aware of Nabiki clutching at her was when the girl had first done it. "Thanks a lot, Nabiki," she said bitterly. "You don't have a lot of confidence in me, do you?"

"Not at all," Nabiki countered. "I just thought it was better to be safe than sorry." She glanced as well down at the bruises on her sister's skin with honest surprise. She wouldn't have thought herself able to inflict actual physical harm on one of the martial artists of Nerima, even such a last-place specimen as her sister. Giving Akane a contrite look, she murmured, "Er, sorry."

"Yeah, well, I'm sorry too," Akane said, even more bitterly than before. "I shouldn't be taking this out on you, not when Ukyo was the one who just got through cheerfully stabbing me in the back."

"And it wasn't just Ukyo," Sayuri added. She paused, then said, "Um... Akane?"

"What is it?"

"It's just... first that seppuku pledge, and now this... I mean, I don't want to be rude, but Ranma's mom looks like a total loon! And his dad's certainly not any better. Are you sure you want to marry into that family?"

"You shouldn't be so hard on Mr. Saotome," Akane protested. "He's been helping me a lot." Then she sighed. "But I really am disappointed in Mrs. Saotome," she said sadly. "Maybe Ranma was better off not growing up with her after all. He'd be an even bigger pervert than he already is..." Suddenly, the last question Sayuri had asked worked its way to the forefront of her attention, along with the fact that Nabiki was sitting there staring contemplatively at her. "WHAT! M- marry that idiot? You've got to be kidding!"

"Or someone's got to be kidding, anyway," Nabiki murmured. "You sure looked like you wanted to give him something better there."

"But that's... that doesn't... I mean..." Akane shot to her feet as if her seat had suddenly grown red-hot. "If you'll excuse me, I need to go kick Ukyo's butt. Later, everybody!"

The remaining three girls watched as Akane raced out of the cafe. The silence was broken by Yuka. "Upperclassman, if we take care of teasing her at school, will you do it at home?"

Nabiki smirked back at the girl. "I suppose I could do that, if you can afford my fee." She held out one hand. "That will be fifteen yen."

-----------------------

"Ranchan? Can we talk?"

Ranma blinked, surprised at the question. "Sure we can, Ucchan." He glanced away from her to their fellow Astronomy Club members, streaming past them in the hallway and up the stairs to the roof. As soon as the two of them were up there, they'd have all the opportunity they needed to talk. Kaito certainly wouldn't mind; he would probably be ecstatic to have one club meeting go by without Ranma managing to somehow mess his telescope up further. "Why'd you even think you had to ask?"

"Because when I say 'talk', I really mean, 'skip today's club meeting so we can go somewhere we won't be overheard'," the chef explained. Dropping her voice and leaning conspiratorially closer, which prevented anyone else from overhearing but at the same time broadcast to them all that she and Ranma had a secret, Ukyo added, "I need to ask you some things about your mother."

"Okay, sure thing," he murmured back. Ranma put his hands in his pockets and began to walk casually backwards against the flow of students. It was more of a trickle than a flow, of course, since by now a majority of the club members were already on the rooftop, but Ukyo was still mildly impressed that he avoided hitting anyone. She was less impressed by the attempt at stealth, especially as he began whistling innocently and looking up as if staring off into the sky, and even less so when he suddenly turned and bolted out an open window with a cry of "Saotome Secret Attack! Run AWAY!"

"Ranma you dummy, wait for me!" she exclaimed once she'd recovered from the shock, hurrying to the window and looking out. Ranma was just a fading red-and-black streak exiting the school grounds over the wall. Grumbling a few choice words under her breath, Ukyo made the descent as well, bouncing off a window ledge halfway down to slow and control her fall. "That jackass better not have bolted for real," she muttered as she raced after him.

"What took ya so long?" Ranma asked as she bounded over the wall. He was leaning against it and would have had an excellent view if she didn't wear the boys' uniform to school.

Ukyo rolled her eyes, walked back to him, and gave him a reproving punch in the shoulder. "I had to pull my jaw up off the floor. What was that stunt supposed to be, anyway?"

He shrugged. "An experiment, I guess."

"Experiment?"

"Yeah. I mean, if you an' I had just cut class together, you know what kind of rumors would be goin' around the school even before the day was over."

"Uh-huh." Ukyo nodded, her eyes going unfocused and sparkly as she contemplated just what those rumors would have been saying.

"I've been putting up with that stuff for a long time now, and it's getting kind of old. So," Ranma shrugged, "I'm trying to see what I can do about it."

She pulled herself back to the real world with some effort. "Uh, Ranchan, I hate to break it to you, but doing it that way made it even more obvious that we were skipping out together."

"You sure about that?" he said with a grin. "Cause if I were the one watching something like that, it'd look to me like I bolted and you chased after me. Not the same thing at all."

His oldest friend stared back at him with an uncertain expression. "You honestly think that will work?" The expression darkened, ever so slightly. "Seems like a lot of effort, just to maybe trick Akane into thinking you didn't spend the time with me."

Ranma snorted. "Akane? Yeah, right, as if. I wasn't doing this for her, Ucchan; if I'm lucky she'll _just_ think we were using the time to make out and that I didn't drag Shampoo into it too. Getting Akane to not jump to that kinda conclusion would take a half day's planning and probably a good hour's worth of preparations to boot. Not a spur-of-the-moment thing like I did. When I did that I was just thinking about the halfway-reasonable guys and girls at Furinkan."

"All five of them," Ukyo quipped. Well, it wasn't like the youngest Tendo was going to get any angrier at her due to her spending time with Ranma today. After what had happened on Saturday Akane might well be angrier now at Ranma for hanging out with her—which was why she would have preferred they both sneak away from Furinkan without being seen—but if he didn't think that mattered then she wasn't going to worry about it. Maybe it could even be a good thing; she'd already seen that Ranchan seemed to be putting up with less crud from Akane lately. "So you want to head on to my restaurant?"

"If that's what you want," he answered. "How long do you think this is gonna take?"

"I'm not sure. Why? You don't have anywhere else to be for an hour."

"Yeah, so I was thinking that if it didn't take that long, and if you wanted to of course, then we could have another practice match like that last one." He'd enjoyed it a lot and knew she had as well. It would be nice to have another good time like that with her, to enjoy again something reminiscent of the carefree days they'd spent together as kids. If he was going to catch grief from Akane for being with Ucchan this afternoon, he might as well go as far as he could in balancing said grief out.

Ukyo smiled widely. In that moment nothing else mattered, not worries about Ranma's mother, nor regrets that her strained friendship with Akane had finally and inevitably foundered. "That sounds great to me, Ranchan. Okay, never mind the restaurant. I think there's a vacant lot a few blocks away."

"Yep," Ranma confirmed, having rather more experience than she did with the random battlegrounds of Nerima. He took a few steps ahead of her, then turned around and began walking casually backwards again. When Ukyo gave him a quizzical look, he grinned at her, waved, and sped up. "Race ya there!" he cried.

_'He can't possibly think he'll beat me like that?' _she thought, doubting her eyes. Ranma was making an impressive pace, true—but it was only impressive because he was doing it while running backwards. At her top speed she would be able to blow past him like he was standing still... unless he was planning to pull some trick, of course... Ukyo mulled over that for a second, then jogged forward only fast and far enough to catch up to him. She then whipped off her bandoleer of minispatulas and looped it around her ankles like a makeshift set of manacles. This of course necessitated her stopping while she did it, but she was pleased to see Ranma stopped as well until she was moving again. She wasn't as pleased at the way he rolled his eyes and made a comment about only one of them _needing_ a handicap to make this even, but she just smiled sweetly and hurried along as best she could without taking a stride longer than eight inches.

The pair of them undoubtedly made a funny sight as they rounded the final corner and came within sight of the lot. Ukyo's feet were nearly a blur from the quick, tiny steps; Ranma was still jogging backward and determinedly not looking over his shoulder, depending on his situational awareness and memory of Nerima to keep him on course. He was grinning at her, a taunting smile that reminded her better than words could that at their respective paces he'd been gaining a half-step on her every seventy feet.

Ukyo grinned back and shifted to full-length strides, pulling free of her carefully jury-rigged ankle-chain and blowing past him like he was standing still.

Were it not for the seconds he spent frozen in shock before whirling around and climbing to his own top speed, he might have beaten her anyway. But as it was Ukyo zipped across the finish line five steps ahead of her fiancé, gave him a good old-fashioned red-eye, then headed back into the road to retrieve her bandoleer and its ammunition. "There's probably some kind of lesson to be learned here," she confided to him as she returned to the lot.

"Yeah, maybe 'never trust a smiling girl'," Ranma shot back. He wasn't quite able to hide his grin, though. As someone who was finally realizing how much time he'd spent mired in the same old patterns, it felt good to see someone he cared about be resourceful and adaptive. Especially since the technique Ukyo had employed to win hadn't been tied to okonomiyaki.

_'Hmm... not sure I can argue with that,'_ Ukyo thought. That axiom certainly would have stood her in good stead during her encounter with Nodoka. The reminder didn't entirely remove her happy glow, but it did diminish it noticeably. "We can spar first, if you want," she said seriously. "But what I wanted to talk about is pretty important. Do you want to get that out of the way?"

"Yeah," he said, heading over to the side of the lot with an adjoining boundary wall, sitting down and leaning against that. As Ukyo joined him, he asked, "What did you want to talk about? You said you wanted to ask me something about Mom?"

"Actually it wasn't just ask you something," she answered. "But I guess that's as good a way as any to start out. So, Ranchan, about your mom..." The chef hesitated for a moment, then asked, "Did you know she flat-out expects you to string along a bunch of mistresses as well as your wife?"

Ranma twitched, closed his eyes, and bit down a few choice words of his own. "Uh... well..." After a few long moments of silence he opened his eyes again to give Ukyo a sickly grin, which fell quickly off his face as his gaze met hers. Sighing, he said, "No, I didn't know. From some of the stuff she said, I suspected. I knew for sure that she wouldn't mind a bit. But actually expect it outta me? No, Ucchan, I didn't know that." He gave an unhappy laugh. "I hoped it wasn't true, but I guess it's time to let go of that."

"Oh, yeah," Ukyo said briefly, certainty weighing the monosyllables as heavily as millstones.

"So how'd you find this out?" he asked.

"You really don't know?" she replied, surprise evident in the words. "Um... did Akane not say anything to you about what happened on Saturday?"

"Huh?" What did that have to do with anything? "Just that her training session with Pop was pretty rough, which was why she got battered enough to slow her down for a couple of days."

_'Uh-oh.'_ Time for some reevaluation. Ukyo wouldn't have bet a bent yen coin against Akane not telling Ranma anything of what had happened those two days ago. She had come to school today prepared for a wide range of possible responses, and had been seriously relieved to find Ranma no less hospitable to her than usual. Akane herself had merely kept quiet and stayed out of Ukyo's way, which was another relief. She hadn't even bad-mouthed Ukyo to her friends behind the chef's back, or at least she hadn't started doing so before they separated for their respective clubs.

Well, apparently her friends and the greater populace of Furinkan weren't the only ones she hadn't complained to. Ukyo chewed her lower lip nervously, then spit it out. "Training session my butt; Genma doesn't have anything to do with it. She overheard me say some things she didn't like, and tracked me down at my restaurant afterward and challenged me to a fight." At least Akane hadn't caught up with her before she'd been able to change out of that kimono. The taxi she'd taken might have been more expensive, but Ukyo was glad she'd returned home that way rather than settling for public transportation.

For a long, long moment Ranma stared at her, then he grimaced and shook his head. "I knew this stuff with Pop was gonna let the tomboy think it was okay to get in over her head."

"You shouldn't sell her quite that short, Ranchan," she protested.

"Really?" he said skeptically. "She actually gave you a challenge?"

"Well, no," the chef was forced to admit. "But I did have to use some actual effort to take her down. Not to mention that she didn't fold like an accordion at the first little bit of pain."

He shrugged. "Maybe she learned something from the fight then. If not directly from you, I hope Pop drove it home to her, since she had to have told him at least why she was banged up like that. Think I'll ask him, just to make sure." However the fight had gone down, it didn't seem to have discouraged Akane from training. At least, she hadn't skipped a session yet that he was aware of, though Ranma mainly only paid attention to them nowadays to know when it was safest to fly away for awhile.

Pushing those thoughts aside, he returned to more important matters. "You said Akane tracked you down after listening in on you. Who were you talking to? An' how does this tie in to Mom?"

Ukyo sighed. "Like I said, it was on Saturday. I had just got home after the half-day of class when your mom called, inviting me to go with her to a café for the afternoon. I said yes, got changed, and rode there with her in a cab. We talked for awhile, never realizing Akane was one freakin' booth over listening to everything and not being too happy about any of it."

"And just what was it that you guys talked about?" Ranma asked, hoping that he'd already heard the worst of it from Ukyo's opening question.

"Nothing you're gonna want to hear, Ranma honey," she warned him. She took a moment longer to gather her thoughts, then gave an abridged version of the talk.

"You were right," he said tiredly once she'd finished. "I didn't want to hear that."

"That makes two of us," she replied. "I've woken up sweating from nightmares that weren't as bad as hearing your mom tell me you're marrying Akane and taking as many mistresses as you can get away with."

"And Akane really sat in the background and listened to all of that? Without busting in and making her opinion known loud and clear?" he wondered. It wasn't the most important thing here, not by a long shot, but it would serve for a few minutes of distraction while he let the bigger issues sink in.

"Yeah, apparently," she said. "Seems crazy to me too, and I don't guess I like it much more than you do. I didn't tell your mom anything that wasn't true, but I wouldn't have said some of it if I'd known who was listening in."

"Was Akane really mad at you? I mean, I know she had to be pretty ticked, to challenge you to a fight and press you even a little bit. But with her, there's mad and then there's _mad_."

Ukyo stared wearily back at him. "She's not going to forgive me this time. Don't know if she'll pick another fight or not, but whatever limping, struggling friendship we had has finally laid down and died. It hurts," she sighed, "but to be honest, it doesn't bother me nearly as much as knowing how much trouble this stuff with your mom could be for you. You're way more important to me than Akane ever was or could be, Ranchan, and unless there's something you really need to get off your mind with her, I'd rather move on to talking about your mom again."

Ranma pondered that, feeling more than a little regret at the thought that things had truly died for real between those two of his fiancées. "Guess maybe I'd just like to know whether Akane's gonna get in my face and demand that I pick you or her," he said. It was an unpleasant thought at best. He was reasonably sure that he could stand up for himself now with her, and even that he could weather the storm of Akane's anger and resentment until she at least accepted that he didn't want to lose any of the friends he had, but he hoped it wouldn't come to that. Maybe it wouldn't; she seemed to be developing more self-control these days.

"I don't know," she said unhappily. "Can't really speak for her like that. But if she hasn't done it yet, maybe she won't. And I don't know if it means anything or not, but when she was in my face challenging me, she sure made it sound like she assumed it was all my responsibility, that your mom had found out about me."

"Weird." But maybe hopeful too. There didn't really seem anything more to be said on this subject, and so he fell silent, reluctantly turning his thoughts back to the bigger problems at hand.

Ukyo started to say something, then cut herself off as she saw the look of contemplation on Ranma's face. She remained quiet, letting him have the time he needed to think. When he was ready to open up again, she'd be there with the ideas she had come up with over the past two days.

"About Mom," he said at last. "The only thing that I'm seeing right now is to buy time. This ain't anything that's going to be fixed in a day." He gave a mirthless chuckle. "Not even the kind of crazy, turn-everything-upside-down days like we have around here."

"There haven't been all that many days that turned everything upside down anyway," she pointed out. "I mean, not for longer than just that day."

"Yeah. But the chaos could actually end up working in my favor. At least, it seems like it _might_ be possible," he said hopefully. "As Mom sees more an' more unbelievable stuff, maybe it'll help her let go of the stuff she always thought was obviously the only way to look at things." He gave her a rueful sidelong glance. "Like that stuff about it not being right for you to own your own restaurant, but just hand it over to a guy with a smile an' a 'Yes, dear'. I'm sorry about that, by the way."

"Not like you got anything to apologize for, Ranchan," she said, nonetheless blushing and feeling very glad he'd said that. "Although now I'm wondering something. Should I be jealous that it took you less than ten minutes to come up with most of the best plan I've been able to put together with two days to think about it?"

"Huh?" It took him a couple of seconds to parse that last sentence. "You mean you already thought about that? About buying time and trying to gently lead Mom into not thinking it's only manly if there's a bunch of girls with the one guy?"

"Not sure you or your mom can afford 'gently'," she cautioned. "Life around here ain't all that gentle, you might have noticed. But yeah, that is what I was thinking." She hesitated, debating something, then said, "You got any ideas on how to do it? How to shake your mom out of her preconceptions, using stuff that's right here at hand? And maybe even solve another long-running problem at the same time? One that you were working on and got distracted from by all the latest insanity?"

"Sounds like you've got some idea about that yourself," Ranma noted, wondering why a tremor of dread had suddenly shot through him. For the life of him he couldn't see what would be setting off his danger sense like that.

"It wasn't that hard," Ukyo said modestly. "Heck, if a few minutes ago was any indication, you could probably come up with it yourself in another quarter hour." She grinned at him. "But this time I'd rather not let you steal my thunder, Ranchan."

"Yeah, so what was your idea?"

"Kill two birds with one stone," Ukyo said with a grim smile. An instant later she realized that the quotation wasn't as apt as it had seemed when she was only looking at things from one angle. "Uh, sorry, that actually doesn't fit as well as I thought. I was just thinking about Shampoo there, not you."

_'Oh, crap.'_ Now he knew where this was going. If ever there was a time for a sudden rainstorm to happen by and get him out of trouble, it would be now. He looked desperately up. The blue of the heavens above was broken only by a single songbird, flying merrily overhead and whistling a cheerful tune. Silently Ranma promised that if he ever saw it again, it was lunch.

Back on terra firma, Ukyo was still speaking. "I mean, it seems like the best fit you could ask for. Maybe you could get rid of her all on your own, though I know how hard that would be even if your mom wasn't here taking up so much of your attention. But surely it would be better to get Mrs. Saotome involved in that too. I mean, unless you've been working behind the scenes without telling me and are just about ready to send Shampoo on her way for good," her tone made it clear that while this was a best-case scenario, she didn't think it likely, "your mom's going to _have_ to find out about the Amazons. And once she does, she's certainly gonna let them know she's not about to have her son dragged off for a life like that. Better to tell her on your own and work together with her, or at least that's how it seems to me."

The chef paused, waiting to see if Ranma had anything to say in response. When he kept quiet, she continued, "It's not like there's any real danger of them playing too rough with her. I mean, we've all been around long enough to know that no matter how many times Shampoo says 'obstacles is for killing', those two by themselves don't really play that kind of hardball. Not here in Japan where they can't get away with it, at least. But for sure they won't just lie down and give up, they'll pull the usual stupid tricks that don't work but do give everybody more grief, they'll argue as long as they can to try and shove Nodoka around to their side. It'll buy you time while she's busy getting them to give up, and it even ought to shake some of that stupid certainty that you oughta grab every good-looking girl who's interested."

Ranma still didn't seem to have anything to say in response. Ukyo took a good look at him, noting with concern his closed eyes, slumped posture, and drawn, weary expression. "Ranma honey...?" she asked.

Without opening his eyes, he said, "Do you trust me?"

"W- What?"

"Do you trust me, Ucchan?" Now he did look up and meet her gaze.

"Yes," Ukyo said slowly, obviously wondering why he'd asked and concerned with the twist the conversation had taken. "You ought to know that, Ranma."

He gave her the ghost of a smile. "Yeah, I do. I was just reminding you, before telling you that I did talk to Shampoo about all this stuff."

"So she wouldn't listen," Ukyo guessed. "Doesn't that just make it a better idea to get your mom involved too?"

"Oh, she listened," he replied. "Just like she was listening in that day at Furinkan. You know, when you said all that to me in the first place."

The chef blanched and gulped. "Sh- she was there? She heard all that?"

Ranma opened his mouth to reply, then closed it again as Ukyo shot to her feet and darted away. Before he could spring up and chase after her, though, he saw her jump to the top of the adjacent house and stop there. She spent a few seconds looking scanning the area from that vantage point, then jumped down again and returned to her original spot seated close to him. "What was that for?" he asked.

"Just making sure nobody was eavesdropping _this_ time," Ukyo said grimly. "For a second there I was wondering if I picked up some curse of my own, to always be overheard at the worst possible time." She well remembered how... eloquent she had been in explaining to Ranma just how critical it was to pull away from the Amazons for good. If Shampoo had really heard that, it was hard to believe that she could have simply let it slide, that she'd really let three weeks and more go by without attempting any sort of revenge. Maybe she'd just caught the tail end of the conversation and had bluffed Ranma about how much she'd really been witness to. "So... Shampoo heard all of that, huh?"

"Yeah, and she was pretty unhappy," Ranma confirmed. "Unhappy enough to spend an hour just talking with me about how things really were, what you'd gotten wrong and what none of us ever thought about."

"What I got wrong? I didn't get anything wrong!" Ukyo protested.

"Huh? Ukyo, where the heck did you get all this certainty anyway?" It had nagged Ranma off and on for a while now, every time he'd thought about the situation with Ukyo and her misunderstanding of Amazon affairs. "I mean, you only got most of this second-hand from me, and the kami know I make mistakes sometimes."

Ukyo's mouth gaped open and closed for a few moments as she tried to find an answer. "I just... it's just... it really is that obvious! What, you're saying that you wouldn't mind after all if it was your own daughter one day handing out the Kiss of Death?" she demanded, her mind flitting easily back to the conversation with those random girls that had hit her so hard. "You'd just laugh it off if it was your son getting treated like they treat Mousse? As long as Shampoo is an Amazon there's no way you can afford to even get near her, and it's plenty damn obvious she'd never give that up for you! She'd rather just sit back and expect you to fit your life to hers!"

"See, that right there is exactly what I'm talking about!" he shot back. "Ukyo, I ain't asking you to like her. Hell, I'm not even asking you not to fight with her. But you gotta see things as they really are. And apparently it doesn't mean anything to you, the fact that I already told you that when push came to shove Shampoo sided with me against Cologne? That without her help then, the old ghoul actually woulda succeeded in forcing me to marry her?"

Once again Ukyo gaped for several moments, trying and failing to reconcile that undeniable fact with something else that seemed utterly self-evident. At last, feeling as if something were crumbling despite her best efforts to hold onto it, she muttered, "Okay, maybe I was wrong about that one little thing. But—"

"But nothing!" Ranma exclaimed, hoping desperately that he could end it now before things got any worse. He couldn't give her the whole story, and without satisfying at least some of her concerns he couldn't just say "I don't want to kick Shampoo out of my life." With most other people he could have made something up—or, as Genma would put it, employed a Saotome Desperation Verbal Technique—but not Ucchan. She deserved at least a truth.

"What if I or Mom or anybody did push that hard, and Shampoo thought she had to give that up to still have a chance at me?" he asked her. "Whaddaya think the old ghoul would have to say about that?" This much was speculation on his part, though it didn't seem unlikely. Even if it was wrong, even if he were doing the Matriarch a total disservice, Ranma was still going to take the gamble. It might not be wise to draft Cologne for the role of scapegoat, but he could handle a few lumps on the head more easily than this entire situation spinning further out of control. "Think it might just make this whole tangled-up mess more complicated and dangerous?"

"Well, damn," Ukyo said bitterly. "So much for the easy answers."

"Oh, like we ever had any chance of those," Ranma retorted, doing his best to radiate only the dissatisfaction he felt with the ultimate state of affairs, and not his relief to have skirted another immediate potential disaster. "Right now Mom is the one to focus on."

"I guess you're right," Ukyo replied, regret staining her words like sake spilled over a kimono. "I don't have any more bright ideas for that, though."

"Yeah, me neither." He got to his feet and began stretching. "But right now, puttin' all of this off to the side and just having a nice, simple, relaxing fight seems like a really bright idea."

She heaved a long sigh, then nodded and stood as well. "Yeah, you're probably right. I know I could use something to remind me of better days." She dredged up a smile and said, "That doesn't mean I want this fight to end with my face in the dust and you sitting on my back, though."

He smiled back at her, the expression taking strength from hers. "Promise to throw in a couple of victory okonomiyaki back at your place an' it's a deal."

It was Ukyo's turn to smile brighter in response to his. If Ranchan wanted victory okonomiyaki, that was what he'd get... but if he actually wanted to eat them rather than watch her scarf them down, he was going to have to take that victory out of her pummeled, beaten hide. "You got it, Sugar."

-----------------------

Akane stared grimly down at her prone opponent. Her nostrils flared as she inhaled the savory scent of impending victory. Her fingers twitched and clenched, anticipating the moment when they would plunge piercingly down through flesh to bone. Swallowing an urge to give a war-cry, she struck the first shattering blow.

Nodoka watched in mild dismay as Akane shredded the precooked chicken. She bit back an urge to stop the girl, hoping that Akane would realize her mistake on her own.

"There! How's that, Auntie?" the youngest Tendo asked triumphantly once she'd finished, gesturing toward the pile of meat. Every bit of it had been torn to the consistency Nodoka had showed her.

"I'm afraid your approach needs some work, dear," Nodoka said regretfully.

"What? Why?"

The Saotome matron gestured toward the denuded chicken skeleton, indicating the numerous areas where small bones had been shattered and included into the pile of meat. "You're still going too fast and with too much force," she explained. "We couldn't even feed this to Mr. Panda, assuming he and Ranko hadn't moved away to stay with other family..."

Akane waited silently for the moments Nodoka spent in wistful thought. A few days ago she would have tried to distract the woman from her melancholia, not wanting Nodoka to spend any time regretting the disappearance of the redhead she'd been so fond of. Now, though, Akane just let it run its course. It brought her that much closer to the end of this stupid lesson without risking the conversation moving to areas it shouldn't. _'She's probably just upset that she can't push 'Ranko' into Ranma's bed too,'_ she thought, grateful that the anger and unhappiness of the idea were diluted by the massive irony involved.

"I'm sorry," she said once Nodoka had worked past her fugue and returned her attention to the present. "I guess I just got carried away with making sure the chicken was all broken down to the right size." She looked away from her teacher, down to the pile of meat. "I bet I can get the bones out, though!"

"No, Akane, don't waste your time," the Saotome matron said gently "Even if you could, you couldn't be sure you had gotten them all." She swept the chicken into a trash bag, then produced a selection of vegetables. "We'll work with these instead."

"Okay!" Akane said determinedly. "Wash them first, right?" When Nodoka smiled encouragingly and nodded, she proclaimed, "Don't worry. I won't mess _this_ up!"

Nodoka held back a sigh as she watched her student give the vegetables a VERY thorough washing... so thorough that she used nearly a quarter of the bottle of dishwashing soap. She waited with ever-diminishing optimism, hoping against hope that this time Akane might realize her error on her own. Failing at that, perhaps the girl would at least pay enough attention to her surroundings to notice her teacher's expression, and stop and ask if there was anything wrong.

When Akane's ministrations separated the tenth leaf from the second head of cabbage, Nodoka decided the time for subtleties was past. "That's enough, Akane," she said with a sigh. "You're still trying much too hard." Forcing a smile, she said in a lighter tone, "But at least we could feed this to a pet..."

"What? Did I do something wrong again?" Akane asked, blinking innocently. "How can you try too hard to get food clean before cooking it?"

Nodoka picked up one of the detached leaves and flicked it. The move sent a lemony-fresh scent of cleaner billowing through the air, as well as illustrating how thoroughly the cabbage's natural fiber had been crushed. The leaf moved more like a piece of terrycloth than something that had grown out of the ground. "Why don't you watch me for a while?" she suggested.

"Okay," Akane agreed. When Nodoka turned away to gather more vegetables from the cupboard, she sneaked a glance at the clock. Halfway done. It would be nice to get the rest of the way through this lesson without having to wreck many more ingredients. _'Even if Mrs. Saotome is the one who paid for them, and even if I am doing this to keep her focused on safe things, it still feels bad.'_ Not nearly as bad as some directions this little get-together could go, though. Cooking wonderful meals for one's family was nowhere near the worst 'wifely duty' Nodoka could be trying to push on her. Akane wasn't about to let things go down that road. Better to keep the woman focused solely on the food, and if the best way to do that was by continuing to screw up royally, then so be it.

It was annoying that she'd accomplished this simply by following her instincts, but for now she could live with that.

Nodoka moved slowly and carefully as she washed the replacement ingredients, keeping up a running commentary describing what she was doing and why. She was encouraged, at least a little, to see that Akane was watching attentively and showing no signs of disappointment, distraction, or insult. On the other hand, that was how all their lessons had gone so far, and it didn't seem to mean much in terms of overall improvement on the part of her student.

_'It's all well and good that she listens,'_ Nodoka reflected, _'but it almost seems as if she doesn't hear everything. I'm not sure how many times I've told her that she needs to slow down, use less effort and more thought, but it simply doesn't seem to be sticking. She keeps on trying too hard, putting too much of herself into everything...'_ A meal could only be made better by including more love, but when frustration, uncertainty, denial, and overconfidence were added to the mix it could only be a recipe for disaster.

As she moved from washing to chopping the vegetables, an idea struck her. Akane's overzealousness wasn't her only problem, but Nodoka suspected it was the worst. Perhaps her results would actually improve if she didn't try and focus every shred of her being into the task at hand? Perhaps a little distraction would actually work in her favor? It might well be possible, the woman mused, wondering how best to test it. Perhaps instead of simply verbalizing everything she was doing, she could engage Akane in unrelated conversation. Then, at the end of the lesson, she could ask her student to recap everything Nodoka had done while they were talking. If Akane could, then during their next session Nodoka could try distracting her while Akane did the cooking.

The Saotome matron looked up from her current task and gave Akane a smile. "There's really nothing special about what I'm doing now, dear, so instead of doing all the talking myself I'd like to hear more from you. How was your day today?"

"Huh?" Akane said, finding it difficult to focus on the actual question. She was more concerned with the fact that Nodoka was looking solely at her, rather than the hands that were blithely chopping a ginger root with Kasumi's sharpest knife. Even as she watched, the woman finished without incident, set the knife aside, and began tearing cabbage leaves. "Nothing special about what you're doing now...?" she echoed weakly.

Nodoka smiled and nodded, her gaze never wavering from Akane. A moment later, though, she realized that it wasn't quite true. "Well, this time ought to be special," she confided to the girl. "It's almost the only time you and I get to spend just with each other." And after what Ukyo had told her, and the other side of the story that she had received from Nabiki, that was more important than she'd first realized. "I hope it's not presumptuous of me to say so, but... but I've always missed having a daughter. And I would like it very much, if I could be there for you in any way you need me to."

Akane looked away, feeling an uncomfortable mixture of warmth and irritation. _'If she really wanted to help me out, she could do it as Ranma's mother by telling Ukyo to back the heck off her son,'_ she thought. _'But I couldn't get that lucky. At least maybe there's a chance she won't be like that with Shampoo. She is a gaijin after all, and that's got to count with somebody as traditional as Mrs. Saotome.'_ Still and all, though, Akane wasn't about to be the one to tell Nodoka about the existence of the Amazon. Shampoo would inevitably learn the truth sooner or later, but Akane would just as soon keep her out of the mix as long as possible.

Aloud, she said, "I... well... thank you, Auntie. Um, you asked me a question earlier, didn't you?"

"Just how your day went, dear."

_'Let's see... Between first and second period I talked to Yuka and Sayuri and heard about Ukyo chasing Ranma out of the building late yesterday, and I spent the whole day trying to keep the promise I made to myself three days ago about not blaming him for things that turn out to be her fault, and that took just about all the concentration I had...'_ Those were the thoughts that ran through Akane's head, but what she actually said was, "It was pretty quiet."

"I see. What about your training this afternoon? It doesn't look like Genma dearest put you through too much of a wringer this time," Nodoka said. "I'm glad today wasn't a repeat of Saturday, at least."

"Me too," Akane grumbled under her breath.

"What was that, Akane? I couldn't quite hear you."

"Um, nothing important. What I meant to say was that you shouldn't blame Uncle Saotome for that. Yeah, things got a little rough then, but that's the price you have to pay, to be a true martial artist." Akane looked down, her left hand closing tightly onto the counter before her, her right clenching into a fist. "And that's what I'm going to do," she promised. "Who I'm going to be."

"Well, if you're really sure...?"

From the way Nodoka had let the words trail off, it sounded very much to Akane like the woman expected, even needed an answer. She didn't have to think very hard about it. "I'm really, definitely, positively, _absolutely_ sure," she declared.

Nodoka heaved the tiniest of sighs. "Then I should apologize to Genma dear, for rebuking him for going so hard on you?"

Akane blinked. "What? You gave him a hard time over it?" When Nodoka gave a shamefaced nod, she fought a minor feeling of dizziness. _'Then that means... even after his wife told him he needed to go easier on me, he didn't at all. Mr. Saotome kept pushing me just as hard as before, he wouldn't let me slack off even a little after losing to Ukyo like that. I'll have to thank him.'_ For a moment the plan of making a delicious dinner for him swam up from whatever self-defeating corner of her mind was responsible for such things, but Akane swiftly choked it down. She had learned at least some lessons from the times she'd spent in the kitchen with Nodoka. What would be a better way to thank him? Oh, yes. "Yes. You should apologize. I'm grateful to him for training me. And... no offense, Auntie, but he's the one who knows how to teach martial arts. You shouldn't interfere with him."

"All right, Akane. I won't," Nodoka promised. She let loose another, more noticeable sigh. "It's just that... I see you girls, who haven't had a mother for so long, or anyone who can even fill a part of that need, and I really want to be able to. As much as you need, as much as I can, and of course I just have to hope that the first of those two isn't bigger than the second... I'm sorry if I went a little too far in trying to protect you."

"That's... it's all right," Akane said slowly. _'Is that really how she feels? Is this... maybe this could be a good chance to deal with the problem head on, instead of trying to keep it from ever getting in my face?'_

A few moments of frantic thought failed to resolve the matter. Maybe if she confronted Nodoka now over her biggest error in judgment, the woman might be willing to listen and consider how utterly wrong she was. Or she might just dig her heels in and refuse to even consider budging, in which case having all this out in the open could easily be worse than the current state of affairs. Akane just didn't have enough information to go on, in order to decide which outcome was more likely.

Since she couldn't make the decision based on pure reason, she decided to choose courage over caution.

"Thank you," Nodoka said, shaking her out of her thoughts. The older woman smiled at her, then turned her attention back to the various vegetables. "We've got all the ingredients prepared now, and it's time to—"

"Please, wait," Akane interjected. "Could... could we put that on hold for now?" When Nodoka blinked and gave her a questioning look, she took a deep breath and continued, "There's something I wanted to talk to you about. Something more important. Something that maybe you could help me with."

"Certainly, Akane," the Saotome matron answered. "Is it some problem? Do you need advice, or is there something else I can do?"

"Maybe." Akane fell silent while she thought of how best to continue. Just jump right in with the declaration that no, it _wasn't_ right that Ranma ought to have his perverted way with every girl that came along? That felt like too much, too fast. Maybe she could lead into the matter through something more specific. "I talked to a couple of my friends at school today," she said at last, trying to feel her way forward without admitting too much at once. "On Saturday after school, they went to a café a long way away. And while they were there, they overheard a conversation that really surprised them."

_'Oh dear.'_ Hoping this wasn't going where she thought it was, Nodoka asked, "What sort of conversation? And who was talking?"

Akane stared steadily back at her. "It sounds like it was _you_, Auntie. Talking to a girl called Ukyo Kuonji."

"I see." Nodoka's poker face was marred by the large beads of sweat springing up on her brow. "I did indeed ask her to meet me there, yes. We had tea and talked about various things, some big and some small."

The youngest Tendo upped the intensity of her stare. "From what Yuka heard, the last thing Ukyo said before she left was that my whole family was a bunch of honorless hypocrites. Was that one of the big things, maybe?"

Nodoka sighed, then replied, "Actually, no. Not as such." She waited a moment to see if Akane would respond with anything more than that stunned, wide-eyed gape. As an alarming flush began to spread up the girl's cheeks, Nodoka reconsidered the wisdom of letting Akane have the next word. "I will admit that it hit me rather hard at the moment, but the next day Nabiki noticed the signs of distress that I must not have been hiding as well as I thought. She and I talked, and although I didn't tell her many of the details, she heard enough to explain to me what Ukyo had been talking about." Nodoka reached out and placed a gentle hand on Akane's shoulder for a moment. "Ukyo was wrong to blame you as she did, Akane, but you must understand why she did it. She wants to be with Ranma, to be his wife, and that can't happen because of the promise to your family. Of course she would resent it, that there were times when you proclaimed your engagement to Ranma was over, and yet that didn't actually end the matter at all."

Despite Nodoka's best efforts, the shades of disapproval had darkened that last sentence. She might understand and excuse Akane's temper tantrums as the results of jealousy, immaturity, and lack of proper maternal guidance, but that didn't make such treatment of her wonderful son any more palatable. Still, there was time to gently correct what needed to be corrected, and in any case Nabiki said the last time Akane had pronounced the relationship over had been quite some time ago. According to the middle Tendo, in the months since then Akane hadn't gone to such lengths even when faced with the same level of provocation. Nodoka hoped it meant the girl had already been growing past such behavior, even without the aid of a mother-in-law-to-be.

Forcing herself to focus on that and let go of unfortunate past mistakes, she said in a lighter tone, "It's understandable, isn't it? If Miss Kuonji allows herself to think that it really was your decision to make, rather than your father's, then she can believe that she should have long ago gotten what she wants. She can tell herself that rightfully _she_ ought to be Ranma's official fiancée. You shouldn't be angry with her, dear, but rather be gentle and gracious and forgiving."

"So what you're saying is, I should show that I'm better than Ukyo by not holding any of that against her. In fact, I should go to her and tell her it's all right, I'm not mad at her for anything she did."

"I'm not sure I would suggest that last part yet," Nodoka demurred. "Perhaps it would be better to let a little time pass before you try to mend any fences."

Akane gave a tight-lipped, crooked smile. "But I'm going to have to do it sooner or later, right? Because you already as good as promised her that she could have Ranma too, and even gave her a place just a half-step down from being his wife for real."

Nodoka sighed. So much for the faint hope that Akane's gossiping friends hadn't heard that portion of the conversation. "I am sorry you had to hear that now, and certainly sorry that you heard it second-hand like that," she said remorsefully. "That isn't how I wanted it, Akane."

"I'm a little more concerned with the bigger picture of what you wanted!" Akane snapped back, nearly losing her tenuous grasp of her temper. With great effort, she unclenched her hands from the grip that had been spreading cracks in the counter. "Mrs. Saotome... you said you were sorry that it all came out like that, that it wasn't how you wanted it to. I can understand that, I guess, because in a perfect world I wouldn't have to say what I'm about to say how I'm about to say it." In fact, in a perfect world she would have been able to communicate that last sentence a lot more clearly than she had. Akane grimaced and took a moment to try and settle her internal turmoil.

"Then perhaps you shouldn't," Nodoka suggested. She pushed aside regret at how things had gone and stared directly into Akane's eyes, bringing more force of personality to bear than she usually did. "Akane, it would be much better for you to take some time to think about this, not react immediately out of confusion and hurt. I'll give you all the time you need."

"I don't need any!" Akane shot back. "Taking more time to think about it wouldn't change how things are. And I'm not going to mince words or hold back." She took one more deep breath, then said what she'd wanted to for seventy-nine hours now. "The truth is, you're wrong. I don't know how you can believe all these things, but they're just not true. You talk about manliness, as if it's somehow a good thing for one guy to share his time out among a bunch of different girls, and that's not right at all! A good man is somebody you can depend on to be there for you, who'll be faithful to you! It's not being manly, to string along a bunch of girls. That's just being perverted!"

Nodoka sighed, and took a tighter grip on her temper. "And where, exactly, did you learn this?"

"W- what? Where did I learn it?" Akane gaped. "I should be asking you that! Mrs. Saotome, I don't know if you noticed, but these things you believe are _not_ a normal attitude!"

"You mean it's not the normal way of things according to the oh-so-important modern-day Western world values," Nodoka snapped back, feeling her control begin to fray. "Those values are nothing that we need or ever ought to welcome in among us. The ways of the past were what made our people strong and our nation glorious, and if we ever lost our way it was because we moved away from those things, believed that we needed to change simply for change's sake! All throughout our history we recognized that there were great men who stood head and shoulders above the common throng, men who simply could not be tied down by the same standards that applied to ordinary people! The very things that give order and stability to those common people, would be nothing but chains and shackles to the truly great!"

She took a few deep breaths, feeling much better now that she had reminded herself of what sort of man her son was. "Those great people should never be expected to fit into a common mold, Akane. They are meant to stride on ahead of us, leading the way for us. That is the sort of man Ranma is and will be. You cannot demand that a man like that should focus all of himself on just you. He has greater responsibilities, to himself and his destiny and the world around him. That is why he deserves more than just one woman to love him and care for him and support him. And of course the more good women he has to bear his children, the better for him and for the world."

"I'm sorry you feel that way," Akane said through gritted teeth. "I know Ranma never spent much time with you but maybe it's in his blood anyway, to think that's just the kind of thing he deserves. But it's wrong. If he was a real man, he'd have sent Ukyo and Shampoo packing a long time ago!"

"That is _enough_!" Nodoka nearly spat the words. "Akane, I am willing to make as many allowances as I must for your misunderstandings about men and manliness in general. You may take as long as you like to overcome those problems. But you will not speak badly of my son!"

Akane stared into the older woman's implacable gaze, and felt the fire die out of her. She wasn't about to surrender, but this conflict had gone far enough. Time to disengage and walk away... though not without a parting shot, she decided. "I understand, Auntie. You'll be glad to be there for me, help me, and listen to me—just as long as I don't say anything you don't want to hear."

-----------------------

Shampoo smiled as she caught sight of Ranma, bounding over the rooftops toward the Cat Café. He was actually a little early for today's session, she noted—always a good thing. Her ancestors knew she'd spent enough time eager for the next chance _she'd_ get to be with _him_. To see him finally and unequivocally return those sentiments would be heaven.

By now he had closed enough of the distance for her to make out the broad, open smile on his face. Her own happiness level climbed just that much higher. That wasn't the look of someone forcing himself to face down a trial, to fight through unpleasantness just to come out on the other side with greater skill in the Art. She'd seen that look on Ranma's face enough in the past to know better now. Her Airen was genuinely glad to be here.

Shampoo's grin widened and became a bit naughtier. That meant she could afford to push a little harder. After all, he'd said himself that it was for his own good.

As Ranma reached the apex of the last leap that would set him on the Cat Café rooftop, he found himself seized by a sudden blast of wind. It grabbed him and spun him head-over-heels, destroying all his control in an instant. However, it wasn't quite enough to steal awareness of his position relative to everything else; he was still headed for the rooftop that he'd been aiming for, and it looked like he was in for a softer landing than usual.

Twenty feet below him, Shampoo braced herself and spread her arms wide in a welcoming hug, all the while maintaining the high-powered Wind Strike to prevent her beloved from regaining control at the last second. It was only fair, she mused—after all, she'd used Ranma to soften her landings many times. How could she pass up a chance to return the favor? Ten feet... seven... fi—

A serpentine coil of solid air slithered across her stomach and around to her rear, destroying her concentration utterly.

That he knew the move wasn't surprising in and of itself; he'd managed it during their last session on Wednesday afternoon, two days ago. But the fact that he could pull it off under such circumstances was surprising, and that he'd use it like THAT... suffice it to say, Shampoo was every bit as stunned as her husband could have hoped. The next few seconds were nothing more than a blur to her, as Ranma twisted like his spine was made of rubber, touched down two feet ahead of her and transformed his remaining velocity in a spinning sidestep that brought him to a stop bare inches behind her, his arms shooting out and around her, his hands locking around each other just over her navel and pinning her own arms without hope of escape. "Nice try, Shampoo," he growled in her ear, and she could almost hear the smirk that framed the lips that said it.

And if he was tense and trembling, nervous at pushing this far, her own heart was pounding far too hard for her to notice.

She licked her suddenly-dry lips and fought to regain a modicum of composure. Wishful thinking aside, this probably wasn't his way of saying he was ready to take her right here and now. "If it get Ranma to do this, Shampoo think is _very_ nice try," she purred, leaning back into him.

"Ah, yeah, well..." He gulped, loudly enough that he wondered if Shampoo could hear it. There wasn't much distance separating his throat and her neck, that was for sure... in fact, strands of her hair were brushing him there, tingling against his skin...

This time she caught his increased spike of nervousness. Shampoo sighed and braced herself for Ranma to let go as if she were red-hot and get some distance between them. She felt him tense, as if on the very verge of doing so... and then he slowly and deliberately released the hold around her, gave her a friendly punch on the shoulder, said a few more words that managed to congratulate himself more than they did her, and stepped around in front of her. Shampoo sighed and switched to Mandarin to mutter, " Someday I'm going to have to speak to you, about not starting something you're not ready to finish. " But she was smiling as she said it.

"What was that, Shampoo?"

"Oh, nothing." She gave him her best Cheshire Cat grin. "Shampoo think she have to say 'Not bad' back to you too. You use Wind Strike even when Shampoo was blowing you around with it already. Very impressive, Ranma."

He puffed out his chest and gloated a bit more obviously. "Wasn't easy, I can tell ya that. Specially not when so much of the wind around me had your aura wound all through it. I don't think I coulda done it at all if you'd surrounded me all the way."

"I keep that in mind for next time," Shampoo promised with a wink. "So, you got other new trick to show me? Shampoo already impress, but so far you not show me anything to say you have move past me in use this technique. Last time you surprise me, you had start basic move and take it to whole new level."

"Geez, you think you've got those expectations high enough?" Ranma wondered. "Nah, what you saw is what I got so far for the Wind Strike." He heaved a theatrical sigh. "Just barely good enough with the move to use it and defeat it, from someone who's known it and practiced it for weeks longer than I have."

Shampoo's eyes narrowed. Ranma gave a squawk and bounced six inches into the air, one hand going reflexively behind him. Using a long-range technique to goose him was less satisfying than certain other methods, but it was enjoyable enough in its way. "You not defeat it that time, Airen," she said triumphantly.

It was Ranma's turn to narrow his eyes in a stare of determined concentration. A new coil of wind separated itself out of the greater whole of the air, streaming forward to twine against Shampoo's cheek.

At least, that had been his intention. His Wind Strike faltered as Shampoo sensed the incoming attack and dispersed it with one of her own. She grinned back at him in challenge, only just holding back from a remark that if he targeted an area somewhat lower on her body she wouldn't stop the move.

He tried again, this time with a two-pronged attack. One gust curved in strong and hard, sliding along an arc that would impact right at the seat of her pale cream-colored pants. The other followed close behind, sweeping toward Shampoo's head to toss her hair around and temporarily blind her.

Before either could land, Shampoo spun in a tight circle. The move naturally kicked up nearly-negligible currents in the air around her—or they would have been nearly negligible if the Amazon hadn't fed her aura into them and whipped them much higher. Both prongs of Ranma's attack were shredded by the spinning winds, and the quiescent extension of his aura that he'd been about to shape into the follow-up third of his counter was disrupted as well.

"This you task for today, student!" she crowed. "Two days ago you manage to do Wind Strike, now you learn to master it! Fight someone who have know it and practice it for more than month now. No surprise, no trick, just you and me and challenge I give you!"

"You're on, Shampoo!" he shot back, pushing his skill to the limits in order to launch three simultaneous attacks, each whipping chaotically toward Shampoo as unpredictably as he could manage.

She could have just flooded the air around her with her own aura, to defeat his attack that way (or at least reduce it to a question of whose strength was greater). But that wasn't the lesson she was trying to teach here, nor would such a response have helped further her own skill. Shampoo pushed hard against her own limits as she sliced neatly through each of Ranma's flows with two of her own, and slid one last current along the surface of the rooftop. Ranma didn't notice for the two critical seconds it took for that Wind Strike to rise up at his feet and slide along his leg in an unmistakable caress. He yelped and bounced away before it could get higher than mid-thigh, which was a little disappointing. But Shampoo made him pay for it by generating a new, wide-spread curtain of near-solid wind beneath his feet as he touched down from the jump, which for all practical purposes acted as a firm, frictionless surface. Ranma's feet shot out from under him and he fell to his rear, skidding just as quickly to the edge of the field.

Shampoo would have liked to lengthen and strengthen the effect, maybe even enough to send him all the way over to slide into her, but she was laughing too hard to manage it.

Ranma recovered more quickly than she did. Quick as a striking serpent his new attempt lashed out, targeting not Shampoo herself but the canteen that rested at her hip. The Amazon wasn't quite fast enough to stop him from yanking it into the air and across the distance separating them. "You want change to curse forms for this?" she asked him as he caught it. "Is up to you, Airen. Shampoo not forget that you big reason for this training is be able to fight even as falcon."

He just grinned back at her, idly tossing the canteen a few inches in the air, catching it, then repeating the process. "Nah. That was just to show you not to let your guard down. If I'd wanted to change you, I should've dumped it on your head while you were still doin' your hyena impression." He gave the flask one last toss and catch, then unstoppered it. "Each session before now when we worked on this move, we spent most of it in our cursed forms. I wanted to stay human for this one. Okay?" When Shampoo nodded her head, he turned the flask over and dumped its contents to the roof. "Thanks for understanding, Shampoo," he said, smiling as broadly and reassuringly at her as he could.

Later, Shampoo would almost be willing to swear that the gleam of sunlight off his teeth and eyes had dazzled her. How else to explain the fact that she completely missed him invoking the Wind Strike again, grabbing the falling water and sending it flying toward her in a broad curtain? By the time she recovered, the fluid had crossed most of the distance between them. Only by a desperate, haphazard spinning leap did she manage to clear the veil of water, and even that wasn't a clear victory—a good three inches of her hair soaked up moisture as the rest of it passed her by.

"Looks like I win that round," Ranma pronounced as she landed, staggering a bit to recover her balance.

"What you mean you win? I dodge the water, and no even say you not really trying get me with it!"

"Oh, sure, you dodged all right." He let the admission hang in the air for a few seconds, then added, "But ya didn't use the Wind Strike as any part of that defense, now did you Shampoo?"

"Hmmph!" Shampoo stood for a moment in a pose of righteous female indignation, nose tilted slightly into the air, arms crossed beneath her bosom, one foot tapping irritably. She then broke from it to run her fingers through her hair. "Ranma no have to get hair wet. You have any idea how frizzy this get if I just leave it dry on its own?"

He gave her an odd look. "Uh... no? Don't think I've ever seen that. And," he coughed into one hand, "I've seen you go from wet all over to dry at least a few times..."

"Oh, yes, that right. Shampoo thinking of something else," she admitted.

The oddness of his look intensified. "Oh yeah? Like what?"

"Like... distraction!" Shampoo's hands whipped forward and around, one gripping a bonbori and the other tossing a replacement canteen into the air before her. She brought the mace around as hard and fast as she could, shattering the plastic and loosing her own cloud of water—which she sent flashing toward Ranma on a quick, fierce gale. The Amazon knew he could evade it if he threw everything into his own desperate dodge, but just let him try to use his own Wind Strike to get out of danger!

Further thoughts were cut off as her hair whipped forward on a wind that was definitely not her own, blocking her vision and distracting her for just long enough.

"Think that round goes to me too," Ranma proclaimed as she succeeded in clearing her line of sight. He'd skipped just far enough to the left to miss her no-longer-guided deluge. Shampoo noted, with a very small amount of moody pleasure, that at least a few drops had spattered on him anyway.

That wasn't much of a consolation, though. "Okay, Ranma. Shampoo admit that you is better at this kind fighting," she said. "But is not really what I meant. Wanted us to use just Wind Strike to attack and counter, nothing else."

"Yeah, well, I'd honestly rather do it like this," he replied. "Anything Goes, Shampoo. I ain't gonna be using only this move in a battle; it'll be just one more thing in my arsenal. That means I oughta practice on integrating it like everything else is." He paused for a moment, then said, "And I was kinda hoping to help you with that, too. I mean, obviously you've got more skill and control than me, when we're talking about doing nothing but Wind Strikes. But you ain't gonna be in a battle where it's the one and only thing you got going, any more than I am. You're teaching me all this stuff, and... and I'd like to help you with something too, when I see a chance to."

"Ranma..." she said softly. She gulped, searched for words, then continued, "Thank you. But... but it not seem fair. Seem like you is taking short end of stick, to help me. This time supposed to be about help you grow best in Air style. If we take principles of Anything Goes and mix them in, we take big part of challenge away from you to give to me. As you sensei, I no can accept that. Most I can say yes to, is something that give equal challenge to both of us."

"I could go for that. You got any ideas ?" he inquired.

"Um... Shampoo still working on it," the Amazon said sheepishly.

"Okay. Take your time," Ranma said, putting his hands behind his back and beginning to pace aimlessly around the rooftop, never looking directly at Shampoo and invoking the Wind Strike at the absolute lowest power he could manage, challenging himself to ruffle her hair with a playful breeze without letting the Amazon realize it was him, rather than Mother Nature, doing so.

"If Ranma want a lock of Shampoo's hair to keep next to heart, all he have to do is ask," the Amazon murmured after a moment, deliberately not looking toward him or speaking the phrase very loud. "If you just trying to tickle, need to go lower, Airen."

"Not subtle enough, huh," he said.

"You think I not know feel of Ranma aura slide over me like second skin?" she asked, turning now to meet his gaze with a sultry look.

He chuckled feebly, looking away. "Just thought ya might be distracted enough for me to pull it off."

"Hmmph. Try again in middle of when world ending around me _and_ I asleep, and maybe then Shampoo not notice." Shampoo kept up her confident smirk even as Ranma's stare prompted her to run her example back through her mind and realize it could have used a little more work. And she couldn't even blame thisverbal blunder on her limited Japanese.

That triggered another thought. "Oh!" she said, blinking. "Shampoo have good idea. Good challenge for both of us, help Shampoo work on something I need even more than Ranma do, not sacrifice what Ranma need to help him most with Wind Strike!"

"Yeah? Let's hear it."

"Simple. Like Ranma want, we do something else while fight with Wind Strike. Like I want, Wind Strike is only thing we use to fight with. Ranma try to control winds to hit Shampoo, Shampoo do same back to him. Give advantage to me for just that part... but since we also is talking at same time, Ranma have his own edge too." She grinned and slid a zephyr along his right shoulder.

Ranma quickly dispersed it, while replying, "Talking? That's it? I ain't so sure that I've got much of an edge, Shampoo. Ain't had many long conversations in my life, and of the ones I've had, a good number of them have been with _you_, lately." He lowered a wide plane of rippling air toward her head, splitting a flow away to zip down her side at the last second.

Shampoo disrupted both with a single wind that coiled like an entire nest of dragon hatchlings. "But you Japanese is still better," she riposted. "Much—much—better." The Amazon punctuated each of those last three words with a new wind snapping toward him.

Ranma stopped them all, though it took enough effort that he forgot what he'd been going to say in reply. "Uh... well... your Chinese is a heck of a lot better than mine, so there!" This took Shampoo back enough that he succeeded in brushing her wrist with a gust. He grinned and said, "Come on, Shampoo, you gotta do better than that! You don't wanna be like Akane, right? She can't handle compliments either!" As he'd hoped, this knocked her even further off-balance, and he tagged her with two solid Wind Strikes in rapid succession.

The combo pulled Shampoo back to her senses. "For sure I not!" She sent a massive gust screaming toward him, powerful enough to throw him around like a rag doll, but veered it away before it could impact the shell-shocked youth. The Amazon stuck her tongue out at him and said, "You give her insult so bad as that, for sure she never pull punch."

"Insult? What insult?" Ranma barely remembered to follow his words up with a Wind Strike, and it suffered from not being more than an afterthought.

Shampoo effortlessly disrupted the pitiful attack. "Compare me to Akane," she teased. "What you think?"

"I think the playful breeze ruffling my hair isn't natural, that's what," he shot back. It wasn't as easy to sense Shampoo's hand in the nearly-nonexistent wind as she'd made it sound when he'd tried that trick on her, but after all she did have a month's experience on him. Nor did he doubt that Cologne pushed harder in training than Shampoo did.

"And Shampoo think you supposed to do something about—" The Amazon cut off, blinking, as something small and light struck her on the back of the head. "Ranma, what was that?" Half-turning, while keeping one wary eye on her handful of a husband, she realized that she'd been hit with a piece of broken plastic left over from when she'd shattered her canteen. "You only supposed to use Wind Strike, remember?" she chided him.

"Hey, I did," he said with a grin. "Used the Wind Strike to throw that at you. It was only eight inches away from ya when I let go of the move and let it go the rest of the distance on its own. You oughta be able to feel a Wind Strike from way more than eight inches away, right?"

Shampoo shook her head ruefully. "You get me again," she conceded. She wondered briefly about how she might escalate things in response to this.

"Maybe you shouldn't make yourself a sitting duck like that," he pronounced. Putting action to words, Ranma began strolling casually along the rooftop, keeping the same amount of distance between himself and Shampoo as had been there before. "That's better. Standing still that long just ain't for me."

"Short attention span? They make drugs to help that," Shampoo said, beginning to move as well. "And Amazon medicines can fix too. But since I not have any of those, I help you different way." She manifested seven winds, coiling toward him one after another in rapid succession, each coming from a different angle and with varying intensity.

"Geez, just how full have you guys stuffed that bag of tricks over the last three thousand years?" Ranma asked, once he'd deflected or been tagged by each wind. Following in the spirit of Shampoo's attack, he mustered up his own best effort once more, sending three winds winging toward her.

When Shampoo stumbled to a halt and let all three strike her, Ranma's jaw nearly unhinged itself. "Sh- Shampoo?" he asked.

"I... sorry, Airen." She began moving again. "You catch me off-guard that question."

For the life of him, he couldn't see why. "Uh... why?" he asked, once he'd stopped her latest attack—a paltry effort that was virtually nothing next to what he knew she could do. He held back from countering for the moment, letting her set the pace she needed to recover and clear up whatever this confusion was.

"Remember session before session before last?" Shampoo refrained as well from launching a new strike.

"On... um... last Tuesday. Yeah, what about it?"

"Remember something Shampoo say she need time to think about?" the Amazon asked, looking sidelong at him but not stopping her movement.

"Uh..." He remembered that there had been something, and that it hadn't made much sense. Somehow he didn't think that was the answer Shampoo was looking for. Time for a Saotome Desperation Verbal Technique. "Yeah, you said you needed some time to think about the best way to train me. What's that got to do with knocking you way off balance now?"

"Oh, Ranma," Shampoo said, half-exasperatedly, half-fondly. "Not everything in life about training and techniques. Although..." the Amazon thought over what she'd just said, and developed a sweatdrop, "Shampoo suppose she not should say that, since this sort of is."

"So what're you talking about?" Both of them were still moving, still circling one another on the rooftop, still neither closing nor opening the distance between them. They were going slower now, though. Ranma toyed for a moment with the idea of launching a new aerial assault to liven things back up, but decided against it. He was more curious than ever to know what had had such an effect on Shampoo, and didn't want to pull a distraction into the mix.

"About something Shampoo have think about many time since then." She gave him a rueful smile, and stopped moving. When he followed suit, she said, "Reason you surprise me so much, was because you give such good opening to talk about it."

At that point his memory finally coughed up a decently clear account of what she was probably talking about. "Wait... is this about the last real thing you said before we hit the sky? Something about you being just an Amazon, not yourself?"

She nodded her head, blushing faintly. "So Ranma do remember," she murmured. "At least enough to get close. Shampoo not forget what you said that time either; it is burn into my memory."

Ranma chewed his lip. "I don't remember sayin' something that would've had such a big impact."

"And that is big part of why it impact." She beamed at him. "For you, it was simple truth, so... um, so not remarkable that you not need to keep it in mind. But that just like you, Airen—do simple, honest thing and never know how big and important and special it is to someone else."

As usual, he felt a little cocky pride at receiving such a compliment. However, the feeling was tempered with some softer, warmer, less easily identified emotion. Putting one hand behind his head and chuckling, he said, "Thanks, Shampoo... but can ya tell me just what it was, that was so special?"

"First have to remind you, what I had say was not that I feel like being just Amazon and not myself. What Shampoo felt was, it like that all I have to give. And Ranma say that was wrong."

"I do remember that now," he said after waiting a few moments for her to continue. "Just so you know, I still don't understand why you woulda thought that. It don't make any more sense now than it did then."

"Is because it one of the things we never talk about," she said. "Neither of us ever really talk about future. Not very much since we change old curses for new one, not at all before then. You already tell me that you not even spend much time thinking about it in past, for sure not as much time as you should have." When Ranma grimaced and nodded, she gave him an apologetic look. "Well, Shampoo have think about future many, many times, but not in way I should. Just think of same few things over and over, few things that look so good and seem so plain as day to see."

He mulled over that for a few moments, putting it in terms of a martial arts battle to help him contemplate the issue. "Huh. That does sound dangerous, Shampoo," he agreed. "Only seein' a few pieces of the whole, and thinking that they _are_ the whole story... obviously I can't say for sure until you tell me where you're going with this, but I can see how that could be even worse than not thinking about things at all."

"I not think it that bad," she said slowly. "But... but I have hurt own self, and even Ranma too. So for that, I am sorry."

"You still ain't said anything specific," he pointed out, sounding remarkably unconcerned at her last admission. What if she hadn't made whatever past mistake she was talking about? He hadn't exactly been handling things properly at the time either. It wasn't like he was gonna hold it against her.

"You want specific? Shampoo give you specific." She looked away and took a deep breath. "You maybe here now for more things than it start out for, but think back to that start. Just like many times in past, it was so you could learn new, powerful secrets that Amazons have keep safe for who knows how long. Before Air style, it was Hiryu Shoten Ha, to give you way to fight back when stupid pervert steal you strength. And before _that_, it was Kachu Tenshin Amaguriken, to test you and bring you levels up all over, even as it give you one specific powerful move.

"When you try to solve mystery of Japanese Nannichuan, Great-Grandmother and me there to help you. Even if she did play silly joke with yellow pot," Shampoo growled, momentarily losing her focus as she remembered Cologne's antics. The fact that it had taken her a full week to realize that there was no way on earth the Matriarch could have decoded directions on how to get from the Cat Café to the location of the third urn, without realizing that said location _was_ the Cat Café, was one of her less proud memories.

"Joke? What joke?" he interjected.

Shampoo just stared at him for a moment, lips quivering, and then she broke out in a fit of the giggles. "Thank you for break the tension, Airen," she said.

"I'm not getting an answer to my question, am I."

"Ask again later if Ranma want. You will feel better if figure out on you own, and anyway we have more serious talking to do now." She dragged herself back to her original topic. "When stupid Ryoga learn Shi Shi Hokodan and Ranma want hurt himself like that too, Great-Grandmother not help, and even warn you off. When you fight her for Phoenix Pill on snowy icy mountain, she show just a little bit of what she really can do, enough to get you to think, and then let you win fight."

"Yeah, I'd kinda figured that out," he said, his tone and expression making it plain that he was none too happy about it. "The Cat Fist was the best I could do then, but from what I've seen it ain't near enough to take on somebody who knows the whole of the Air style. She coulda just whipped up a tornado and spun me round and round in it with a couple hundred cubic feet of snow, right? Coulda smacked all the fight outta me without even letting me close."

Shampoo nodded apologetically. "And she only bother with that if she feel like being flashy, instead of take easy way of clamp down hard on air. You no can breathe, for sure you no can fight."

It was Ranma's turn to let his gaze fall away from her, coming to rest on one fist he held out before him. "She can even do that, huh... Sometimes I wonder how far there is to go," he said, opening and closing his hand while idly spinning a breeze around it. "I can still remember the earliest days on the road with Pop, and this... all these lessons... they're so far from where everything started out..." After a few more moments of contemplative silence, he shook his head forcefully as if throwing off the distraction. "But that's for the future, and you were tellin' me about the past. What were you trying to get at, anyway?"

"Things very close to what Ranma just saying. Lessons of mastery. Doors to open and go through, and wisdom of ones what have already pass down those roads." They'd both been standing immobile for quite some time now. Shampoo broke from this to take three careful steps toward him, before stopping and saying, "Those very thing you have put at center of you whole life, Airen. Where you think you go in all the world, to find them? What places can have any chance to teach you what Amazons have to teach, give what we have to give? For sure you could do what old pervert master did—well, the non-perverted part, Shampoo mean—and travel all over to dig up secrets and learn new things by you own seeking. But he no match for all Amazon Elders at once, and no matter how good his school may be it is only small fraction to what we have. Amazons have search these secrets out for three thousand years, and work and make our own too."

She stared at him as intensely as ever she had, glad to see him meet her gaze with no sign of reflexive denial. "Spatula Girl Ukyo no can give you anything like that. Best she could say is she maybe not put too heavy chains on you. Violent Girl Akane never in her life could ever say even that. Or she would, but it would be either lie or stupid thing she just assume without thinking things through. Crazy Ribbon Girl... well, I not even need go there, yes?"

She paused to let him say something if he wanted to, but he just kept looking pensively at her. "So. You start to see now what I believe all along? Thought for sure that contest was over before it even begin, because I am only one who can give you kind of life you really want. Could say, Amazon superiority mean Akane and Ukyo have to lose, and when I say that it not even saying anything personal about Shampoo. Just mean I am way into what you want, the path you whole life has shape you to walk."

"Is that the reason why you never seemed to take it really hard, no matter what crazy stuff happened?" Ranma asked, breaking his silence. He could have been more specific, could have said something like 'That time I bit your head off after the first run-in with the Ghost Cat' or 'That time with the Reversal Jewel when I sat there and sat there and couldn't manage to say I love you', but found he didn't want to dredge up specifics.

"Big part of it, anyway," she said. "If Shampoo sure that she going to win in the end, that there no other chance outside of stupid long-shot things like you or I die in some battle, then why worry too much about not see much progress?" She could no longer meet his gaze. "Why worry if I not doing my best to understand Ranma, to give what he need now, to ask what things he is ready for? Just jump on you and ask you to do what I want, or try shortcut to take us straight to what I so sure would be the ending anyway.

"And it not even what I want!" Her outburst caught him completely by surprise. He'd been shifting his weight, hesitating on the verge of walking forward to close some of the remaining distance between them, and he nearly fell flat on his face. He had to take two staggering steps before he recovered his balance. Shampoo didn't seem to notice. "Not know when it start, but feelings been changing for while now. Stupid thought was like warm blanket to hide under for so long, but it start to itch and nag and even hurt! I not want you to come to me because of what you can get out of new family, want you to choose me! To be happy in bigger picture as we walk down it together, to be thankful for everything Shampoo bring to you life, yes—but also say I worth having for more than just where I was born!"

"Shampoo..." He took a few quick breaths for courage, then walked close enough to put one hand on her shoulder. "You told me that already, remember? That that's what you want, how you really feel. You don't... there's no reason to get all upset like this. You think that was some terrible mistake? Just bein' complacent and taking a long time to decide things weren't going okay at first, that you needed to do better?"

"Where would we be now, if Shampoo had not make that mistake?"

"Who knows? You seem to be overlookin' the fact that you weren't the only one who needed to choke down a few hard lessons. And yeah, the way you changed things around here a couple months back is what really helped me buckle down and start learning them, but I had to be ready for it too. Like, the kind of 'ready to start changing things for the better' that comes after a year of life in this nuthouse and enough crazy stuff to write my own tragedy in three acts!"

He paused, giving her a scrutinizing look. He wasn't the best at reading people, especially outside of combat, but she seemed to be responding pretty well. Certainly she wasn't just shrugging off his words. Which was good, because Ranma was painfully aware that the reassurances weren't flowing as freely and powerfully as he would have liked. He knew what he wanted—to put an end to the sadness he'd seen in her eyes, to remove the self-recrimination, to bonk her softly but firmly over the head with the truth that he didn't blame her and she shouldn't either.

Most of all, he wanted to tell her that he wouldn't have done what she'd started out counting on and ended up fearing. He'd made some similar mistakes in the past—dating Kuno in an attempt to get his hands on the wishing sword, even going out with her for the Instant Nannichuan—but at his worst he wouldn't have taken it that far. He would never take all someone had to give just for what he could get out of it, would never have settled for a loveless marriage just because the other perks were good... he would never have hurt her like that... would never do anything to hurt her like that...

"Ranma?" Shampoo said softly. He was still looking at her, but his gaze seemed to be going through her at the same time. Her Airen was trembling and pale, but the hand he'd placed on her shoulder had only tightened its grip. In fact, he was clutching her almost as if she were the only thing keeping him up, hard enough that if she'd been a normal girl it would have actually been painful.

Shampoo was anything but normal, of course, and the strength with which he gripped her was really just reassuring. Reaching up and out with her left hand, she took gentle hold of his upper arm. She could feel him trembling even more easily through that point of contact, as if his hand on her were the steadiest part of him right then. "Ranma?" she repeated gently.

He gasped for breath, and seemed to break out of the worst of the fugue. "Shampoo..." he answered, nothing more.

"Is you okay?" she asked, as his eyes seemed to glaze over once more. There was a different look in them now, though... and was she imagining things, or was the remaining distance between them decreasing as well?

"Still a little scared," he said in a near-whisper. And now she was certain of it; he was moving slowly but inexorably forward. "Still don't know how everything's gonna work out. But..." He licked his lips, the sight of which sent an electric jolt traveling up and down her spine. "But I'm not gonna keep my head buried in the sand this time, Shampoo..."

"Ranma..." The word was more breathed than spoken. He was very close now. Shampoo closed her eyes and waited, reaching for at least enough calmness to keep her heart from exploding out of her chest.

Even with her eyes closed, Ranma filled every bit of her awareness. The scent of him, the whisper of the wind across his form, the sound of his breathing, the feel of his arm under her hand, his hand on her shoulder in a grip that had become satisfyingly possessive, the ecstatic jolt as he brought his left hand up to match that hold on her right side, the sudden pained half-gasp half-grunt that slipped out of his lips, the impact of his face against her bosom as he slumped down onto her...

" What the hell! " Shampoo exclaimed, the moment well and truly shattered. Her eyes flashed open, just in time to see his flutter shut. His grip on her shoulders failed at the same time. He dropped senseless to the ground, three brightly-feathered darts protruding from his left bicep.

She spun to face the direction the projectiles must have come from.

And then she screamed loud enough to drown out a Chariot of the Storm.

-----------------------

The first thing he became aware of, as he struggled his way back to consciousness, was the smell.

'Unpleasant' didn't begin to do it justice. 'Foul' was laughably inadequate. It felt as if the stench had scorched its way up his sinuses and was now cheerfully chewing on his brainstem. His eyes whipped open. With an exclamation that couldn't decide whether to be a gasp or a dry heave, Ranma shot out of his chair and to his feet, staggering ten steps backward to slam against the nearest wall.

It didn't exactly get him out of the odor's reach, but at least at that point he was awake enough to notice other things. He had been seated at a square table on which sat a large cloth pouch, which Ranma sensed was the source of the vile odor. Other tables dotted the floor around him, and two of the walls were lined with booths. He was inside a familiar room, in a familiar building—the dining area of the Cat Café.

Two of the restaurant's usual occupants were in the room with him. Cologne was standing at one edge of the original table, on the side that had been to the left of his seat. The ancient Amazon was staring at him calmly, looking for all the world as if the nostril-searing reek meant nothing to her.

Mousse wasn't so stoic. The Chinese boy had his glasses on, but the streams of water leaking down his cheeks suggested that right now the lenses weren't doing him any good at all.

Ranma blinked away a few tears of his own, then scanned the vicinity for any sign of Shampoo. He kept a wary eye on Mousse while doing it, as it wasn't hard to figure out who had been responsible for his blackout. It certainly hadn't been his own nerves; he might have been scared, but he wouldn't have actually fainted just from the effort of kissing Shampoo...

That thought rumbled through his mind for a long, long moment, with the distant, growing power of an avalanche. He... he had been... he wanted to...

_'OhcrapI'mnotreadyforthis!'_ Even as the protest skated through his consciousness, though, he realized it wasn't true. At least, in many important ways it was dead wrong. He _was_ ready for some things to change, was ready to move farther down a road that he'd been walking for awhile now. Even more importantly, he was ready to stop lying to himself about just what road it was.

But he definitely wasn't ready to turn that road into a free-fall.

He took another few seconds to map out a quick plan of attack, then fixed Mousse with a glare and took a deep breath. Unfortunately, the increased distance and mental preoccupation that had shielded him from the stench for a few precious moments weren't strong enough to withstand that, and the pigtailed teen nearly collapsed as he fought off a surge of nausea.

"Good to see you back on your feet," Cologne said dryly. The Matriarch produced a large pot from somewhere, set it on the table before her, transferred the sachet from the table to the pot, then stirred briskly with her staff. Almost immediately the odor faded from the air. "My apologies for the method, but ordinary smelling salts wouldn't have overpowered the drug Mr. Part-Time here used on those darts."

Ranma scowled, remembering the sudden sting that had been the last semi-clear memory before his blackout. "At least I didn't get the worst of that stink, Granny," he growled, and although he was supposedly speaking to her he was looking straight at Mousse. The Chinese boy didn't say anything in response. It might have surprised Ranma, had he not currently been busy feeling anger, frustration, and antipathy toward his reappeared rival. He let his glare burn for five seconds longer, then shifted some attention back to Cologne. "And it didn't even bother you at all? What'd you do, block the smell from movin' through the air to your nose?"

"Nothing so impressive," she admitted. "The stench from that type of powder is only detectable by men, not women. You've seen the women's version before, I believe."

"Gotcha." All of those things were inconsequential, but that might even be a good sign. If the old ghoul was willing to talk like this about nothing in particular, then she probably didn't know what had almost happened on the roof. Mousse had undoubtedly had some complaint or other to make—Ranma would bet good money that the phrase 'forcing himself on Shampoo!' had been used at least once—but considering the half-blind boy's track record with such things Cologne would have to be truly senile to simply take his word for it. Mousse had been known to blame Ranma for mistreating Shampoo when the pigtailed teen had actually been running away from her.

Maybe he had been mistreating her at that, one tiny corner of his mind suggested. But certainly not in the way Mousse had meant.

Regardless, it was hopefully a good sign that Cologne wasn't already rubbing her hands together and cackling with glee, trying to steamroll him straight to the alter. It was a long, long step to there from where he was now, finally sort of realizing that maybe he did want more from Shampoo than friendship, and Ranma had no desire to see whether Cologne thought she could propel him over that distance with one swing of her staff.

Still, regardless of how careful he needed to be here, there was one question he wasn't going to hold off from asking any longer. "So, where's Shampoo? I don't see her around anywhere." For an instant the idea flitted through his brain, that Mousse might have caught her off-guard as well and had her caged up somewhere, and he'd be able to beat the information out of duck boy and go to her rescue. It was kind of a pleasant image, even if he did recognize its utter impossibility an instant later.

"My great-granddaughter is off working out her frustrations," Cologne returned. She glanced away from Ranma toward Mousse, giving him a hard stare. "She was most unhappy at having to let a certain someone live."

The Chinese boy still didn't say anything. The oddness of this silence was a little more noticeable to Ranma this time, but he didn't bother commenting yet. "So I guess she's the reason I didn't wake up with a slit throat or nothing? She stopped Duck Boy here from following up on his original cheap shot?"

"You could put it like that," Cologne said dryly. "And then it was my turn to step in and save a life."

"How did that happen, exactly? How'd you know you needed to?" Ranma asked, shooting her a piercing look. If Cologne had been spying, it would explain how she could have known to intervene before Shampoo cooked Mousse's goose, but it would also mean the Matriarch really had seen what had almost happened. "I know you made it sound like you weren't gonna stick around and secretly watch everything Shampoo an' me did during our training, but all you really promised was that you wouldn't do it on that one first session."

Cologne cackled. "Son-in-law, it does my heart good to hear you actually paid that much attention, and thought about things deeper than just at surface level. But no, I haven't watched or listened in on any of the times you and my great-granddaughter have spent practicing together."

Mousse stirred at this, tensing further and flushing more visibly, but still didn't say anything. Ranma's curiosity about the Chinese boy's unusual restraint ratcheted up another notch, but hashing things out with Cologne remained a higher priority. "Then how...?" he asked.

"The same way he realized you were up there with Shampoo," she returned. "The illusion I put into place doesn't block sound. Just before he could enter the restaurant, he heard you speaking to my great-granddaughter. By the same token I heard her expressing her thoughts on his return, his method of announcing his presence, and particularly his timing." The Matriarch shook her head. "In fact, I suspect everyone within at least two blocks heard her. But to my knowledge none of them speak Mandarin, so they didn't get the full power of the experience."

Ranma mulled that over, particularly the last sentence. She'd said it as if she wanted to reassure him. It sounded like what she was really saying, was that if he still wanted to keep his training with Shampoo secret then Mousse was his only concern. Probably it would be good to keep that under wraps for at least a little while longer, he decided—hopefully it would be possible.

With that thought in mind, he shifted his attention to his silent rival. "You're bein' awfully quiet there, Mousse. The old ghoul didn't clam you up with a pressure point or nothin', did she?"

"Is that good enough for you, Honored Elder?" Mousse spoke the words in a tone that robbed them of any politeness they might have had. "I just sat here quietly until someone invited me to join the conversation, didn't explode or force my way in or anything."

"You make it sound as if I gave you an order," the Matriarch returned, her own voice much softer and sadder than his. "All I did was challenge you to do that, boy, and I only did that after you made it plain you weren't willing to go elsewhere and wait for him to wake up. And yes, I was a little impressed that you showed such patience."

"Patience?" Mousse echoed bitterly. "I didn't have much other choice than learning that. Not when I went back to Jusenkyo to cure my curse, like you _ordered_, and wound up in the Spring of Drowned Carp instead. Spending all those weeks with a two-meter pond as your whole world will teach you how to wait, at least. Even if it doesn't do a whole lot for other skills you might have really been wanting to work on."

Despite himself, Ranma felt a pang of sympathy for Mousse. "Aw, geez, that sucks. How'd you finally get out of there? Don't tell me some idiot scooped you outta the pond and took you to the Guide to get boiled for fish stew."

"An Elder eventually condescended to rescue me," Mousse replied bitterly. "It was Elder Bi Xinin, actually. She's the one who you can always count on to oppose Cologne and her agenda. I guess I'm lucky there was someone like that, right? Someone who'd be willing to ignore any order to keep me under wraps as long as possible."

"Are you actually accusing me of sabotaging you like that?" Cologne said incredulously. "Are you telling me to my face you believe I told everyone back home to just leave you alone and helpless in such trouble as that?"

"You're certainly not saying you didn't," Mousse pointed out, his face set like flint.

"Then let me say exactly that," the Matriarch replied, her voice a dangerous purr. "I didn't send any word at all concerning you, and certainly no orders. I didn't warn anyone back home that you would be returning to make your own trip to Jusenkyo. I left everything completely and totally up to you.

"But I did eventually get word from them!" Cologne's voice now rasped like a buzz saw. "I certainly don't know where you would have gotten the idea that the Elders must have known right away how you went there and took a longer swim than you meant to. After all, you simply went straight to Jusenkyo, you didn't go to the village first to tell anyone of your arrival. You knew that the laws regarding the cursed springs had changed, but you didn't bother to ask anyone for any more detail than that. You didn't even think it worth your while to visit your mother first!"

"Don't throw that in my face," Mousse said, his voice near-choked with fury. "I wanted to surprise her with a son who wasn't handicapped by a stupid duck body anymore."

"Hmm. The fact remains that what happened to you, happened as a result of your choices," Cologne said implacably. "Do not presume to blame me. Everything you would have needed to know about the cursed springs in order to avoid such an unfortunate accident is now publicly available knowledge. All you had to do was bend down your stiff, stubborn neck enough to ask."

"Whatever," Mousse said, shifting his gaze back to Ranma. "So there you have it, Saotome. That's where I've been, all this time while you've been free to hound Shampoo and make her life miserable."

"Yo, Cologne." Ranma didn't look away from Mousse as he said this. "Since the knowledge about Jusenkyo is free for the askin', I have a question. Is there maybe a spring there of Drowned Guy Who Can Get A Friggin' Clue?"

"There's a Spring of Drowned Righteous Man," Cologne replied. "And believe me, there are times when I'm tempted."

"Oh, really?" Mousse snapped. "I'd be willing to take a dose of that, Honored Elder—if you splash him too! I'd even be glad! If I have made any mistakes with Shampoo, I could apologize to her for them, and this honorless bastard wouldn't be constantly hurting her and just trying to use her for what he wants!"

Ranma scowled like a thunderhead. "Mousse, if you took a dip in the Spring of Drowned Righteous Guy, you'd be _beggin_' Shampoo to not only forgive you, but scrub all the old memories outta your head with the Xi Fang Gao!"

"Well, if that isn't the pot calling the kettle black, I don't know what is," Mousse sneered, absently producing a black cast-iron pot and a bright shiny copper kettle from inside his robes and setting them on the table. "Saotome, my eyes might not be so great, but I've watched you often enough to see it. You don't care about her, and the only times you pretend you do are when you want to get something out of her. All you care about is what she can give you, whether that's help with whatever problem you've gotten yourself into or just the ego boost of thinking you could get a girl as wonderful as Shampoo for yourself!"

"Yeah, right," Ranma spat. There was an uncomfortable amount of truth in what Mousse had said, or at least his accusations had at one time been uncomfortably true. But even at Ranma's worst, he hadn't been that bad. "I guess that's why I fought that damn Ghost Cat to get her free. Yeah, that makes perfect sense, Mousse! I fought through my own personal idea of _hell_ just so I could obligate her to give me a kiss!"

"Don't you dare bring that time up!"

"Why not, because it's one of the few where you couldn't completely lie to yourself about how things really were? Or is it because it's prob'ly the most blatant example of how _you're_ the one who only wants to get what he wants from Shampoo?"

"ENOUGH!" Cologne boomed as Mousse produced a set of knives in each hand and Ranma slipped into a ready stance. "I will not have the restaurant destroyed in a senseless brawl! Mousse, if you have anything else to say to him before you make your formal challenge, please exercise a little self-control as you do so. Ranma, I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't provoke him!" Then, as Ranma turned his scowl at Mousse to a frown at her, she added in a whisper that the wind carried only to his ears, "He's been gone a very long time, no doubt dreaming of Shampoo, and you know what kind of reception she gave him just now. Please have a little compassion on him."

"Yeah, all right," Ranma agreed.

"You don't want him to provoke me?" Mousse exclaimed. "Then tell him to stay the hell away from Shampoo! The last thing I needed to see, when I finally got back here, was him about to force himself on her!"

"Oh, for goodness' sake!" Cologne snapped. "Enough with the ridiculous, idiotic accusations! Son-in-law couldn't even force himself on..." Her voice trailed off as she realized there was no good, pithy way to finish that statement, at least not without insulting Ranma more than she cared to. "What I meant to say is that if you saw anything, it was far more likely Shampoo's doing than his."

Ranma bit down hard on an idiotic impulse to forcefully correct the Matriarch. He kept as straight a face as he could, thankful that she wasn't looking his way and that even with his glasses on Mousse couldn't make out fine details at this distance.

"She wouldn't do that!" Mousse declared. "At least not if she didn't think she had to. I can think of one reason why she might, though. Maybe the head of her family was coming down hard on her?"

Cologne let loose a snort like a cannon blast. "Boy, let me make one thing abundantly clear." She paused for emphasis, then said, "I have done _nothing_, in all the time that you've been gone, to push Shampoo toward Ranma, or him toward her. Everything that has passed between them has been their own decision. It was Shampoo's idea to offer to spend time with him in training, and yes I did say _training_ and nothing more sordid. Just as it was Ranma's choice to accept.

"If you want any more detail than that, you'll need to talk to Shampoo herself," the Matriarch pronounced. "And Mousse... please listen to me when I say you need to do that at least once. Have one real, honest conversation with her. If you've ever done that, in all the years you have known my great-granddaughter, I'm certainly not aware of it."

"Fine, I'll go talk to her as soon as we're done here!"

"You won't find her. As angry as she was, she'll be in the skies for hours yet to come, possibly even past nightfall." In fact, Cologne strongly suspected she wouldn't see Shampoo for dinner tonight. The Matriarch would bet good money that her great-granddaughter was planning to hunt down and eat a wild duck, which would undoubtedly relieve more than just hunger. "Anyone who would want to find her and talk to her, would have to have his own wings to do so."

_'That sounded like a hint,'_ Ranma thought uneasily. Still, after Cologne's recent speech the thought that maybe she did know more than she was letting on wasn't quite so scary. The ancient Amazon had a point; she hadn't tried to force anything. Not recently, not for a very long time now... and she'd never once pushed as hard as she was capable of. _'Is it a good idea, though? Yeah, I do need to talk to Shampoo about this. But am I even ready for that? Or do I need to try and get my head on straight first, so that I know what I want to say and don't screw that conversation up?'_ Maybe the best thing to do would be to hit the sky and fly in a wide-ranging course, thinking things through while keeping half an eye out for Shampoo. Depending on what progress he'd made when, or if, he spotted her, and how unhappy she still seemed to be, he could decide then whether to approach her or let it wait a little longer.

"I can do that," Mousse said slowly, after a long pause. "I—"

"What do you mean, you can do that?" Cologne interrupted, scowling dangerously at him. "I told you that if you wanted to come back to this town, you had to cure your curse. Furthermore, I specifically stated that you couldn't just take a cure then grab another curse before returning."

"Yeah, and you also said I couldn't bring back Jusenkyo water with me to use here. But you didn't say anything about Instant Jusenkyo powders." Mousse dredged up a small, twisted grin. "I haven't forgotten what Shampoo said to me before I left, what you just trampled right over with your command that I get rid of any curse at all. She told me how great she thought it was to fly, and that she was disappointed in me for never really taking the time to explore that.

"So I obeyed the stupid letter of the law, Honored Elder. I only brought the temporary stuff with me. A crate of Drowned Falcon powders, and another of Drowned Duck."

"Better use the duck ones first," Ranma advised. "_If_ Shampoo really said it to you like that, she might not've been one hundred percent fair. I've seen you flapping your way through the air enough times to tell you this for sure, Mousse—flying as a duck's got nothing on what it's like as a falcon. Once you try the real thing, the only use you're gonna have for the plump, juicy white joke is to turn mice or something into poultry dinners."

"Thanks for the advice, Saotome," Mousse sneered. "As it turns out, I _was_ planning to start out with the duck powders. Although I had thought that tomorrow would be the first time I'd use one."

"And it still needs to be," Cologne broke in. "Mousse, I don't think you should chase after Shampoo tonight. I think you would do better to give her time to cool down. But if you do, under no circumstances should you do it in the form of a duck. Not unless you want Shampoo to find you, dive out of the sky and strike you dead before she realizes she didn't just catch a wild bird for her supper."

_That_ little statement managed to push aside Mousse's simmering anger. "Y- you don't think..." he said, swallowing convulsively.

"I most assuredly do," Cologne promised, swallowing a remark about how she didn't think he wanted to go that far to get close to Shampoo. It just wouldn't have been in good taste. "Tomorrow will be soon enough for you to stretch your wings in your old form. And may I ask what plan you had for that, anyway?"

"Ain't it obvious?" Ranma asked. "You already let me know he's gonna make a formal challenge to me. Throw in the fact that he brought back the stuff to let him put on his old curse, and there you have it. Duck Boy here thinks he can 'prove himself' to Shampoo by havin' it out with me in our cursed bodies." He turned his most irritating grin—the one with enough sheer obnoxious power to even make it through Mousse's myopia—on the long-haired boy. "Well? Am I right?"

Mousse clenched his fists and gritted his teeth. "It's all in the letter," he grumbled, pulling out a sheet of paper half-covered with kanji.

Ranma ambled over to the table, finally retracing the distance he'd reflexively covered on first waking up, and took the note from Mousse. "Yep... yep... tomorrow, cursed forms at noon, predictable as ever... uh huh..." As he got to the end, his eyes widened. "Well, at least you got one genuine surprise in here, Mousse," he said slowly. "Nothing about whoever loses finally has to give up Shampoo for good? Just, the duel will prove to her who the better man is?"

"Like I said, I had a lot of time to think in that damn spring," Mousse grated. "So? Do you accept the challenge?"

"Gonna have to make one little change to these terms," Ranma answered.

Mousse snorted. "Why am I not surprised. What is it?"

The Saotome heir glared back at him. "Look, man, do you seriously think I don't know how you plan to fight this out? A duck can't possibly go beak-to-beak with a falcon and have any hope of winning. You may be stupid in a lot of ways, but not like that. You're gonna use the same tricks you always did, and fight with Hidden Weapons." His eyes narrowed. "And this time we're both gonna be in the air, maybe thousands of feet above the ground. What do you think's gonna happen to all the knives and junk you miss me with? Do ya even care about the innocent people on the ground below?"

That actually wasn't going to be a problem, but there was no way in hell Mousse was going to tell his hated rival that. "Fine, I guess you're asking for the duel to start and stay outside of town, rather than in the place I put in the letter?"

"You got it." Something occurred to Ranma. "And since I'll need some extra time to get from school all the way out there, I guess I need to move this time back too. Let's say, three o'clock in the afternoon?"

"Fine," Mousse sneered. "Any other little objections you'd like to make? Any more favors you want to ask?"

Ranma stared coldly back at him. "Let's get one thing straight, Mousse." He gestured at the paper, lying now on the tabletop before him. "A half-blind duck who's barely spent any time in the air, versus a falcon who loves it enough to spit on the idea of a curse cure? I am _humoring_ you here, bird brain. It ain't gonna hurt you to humor me a little too."

"Fine." This time the word was spat, not sneered. "Now, if you ladies will excuse me, I'm going to break open my box of Instant Falcon powder and go after Shampoo."

"For what it's worth, I suggest you search through western Tokyo," Cologne said. "She spends a lot of time there, since the tall buildings and the winds around them make for excellent variable-condition flying challenges." Plus, she was all but certain that Shampoo wouldn't be there today. The Matriarch believed that in her great-granddaughter's mood, the girl would have sought out the most natural, unspoiled areas for her sojourn.

"And Mousse?" she called as he headed toward the stairs that would take him to a bathroom. "I know you don't honestly believe I mean this, but it's true nonetheless. I wish you good fortune, and that you find what you need."

Mousse hesitated, as if on the verge of saying something. But finally he just gave a clipped nod and walked away.

Ranma waited until he'd heard the sound of paper tearing, water running, water splashing, cloth being displaced, and feathers flying. He wasn't surprised when Mousse chose a way out of the building that didn't require the neo-falcon to fly back down within sight of him. As the clap of a closing window informed him that Mousse was finally gone, he turned back to face Cologne. "I notice you didn't say you hoped he'd find what he wanted."

"You're beginning to do quite well in thinking things through and working your way down to what they really mean," Cologne said, adding an instant later, "even if it took you a ridiculously long time to get here." She sighed. "For a teacher, it's a joy to watch and help the young learn important lessons. Or at least it should be, for anyone who calls herself a teacher. And it should hurt, when you try and fail to help someone with the lessons that he needs most critically."

"You've been trying that with Mousse for a long time?" Ranma guessed. Cologne nodded. "And you still ain't got through to him."

"Not I, not Shampoo, not anybody else who's tried," the Matriarch said. "He's gotten very good over the years at pushing those glasses up onto his forehead whenever it looks like he might have to stare into the harsh face of reality."

"Yeah, I've seen that," Ranma said, thinking back over the past year. "He wasn't usually this bitter about it, of course..."

"Well, anyone would be angrier than usual after spending all that time stuck as a fish," Cologne replied. She hesitated, then dangled a nice juicy worm on a conversational hook. "But just now it felt like there was more to it than that, somehow..."

_'Yeah, almost as if he saw me actually moving in to kiss Shampoo for real,'_ he thought. "Uh... with all the stuff he's been through lately, do you think maybe the truth is finally starting to work its way through to him? I mean, he's never gonna be with Shampoo. If he's getting hints of that leaking through the best denial he can manage, it'd explain his attitude for sure."

"That could explain it," she allowed. "I'd like to think it might be true." She frowned. "He certainly wasn't very open or honest with me during the time we spend waiting for you to wake up, though. Not that the fool ever really has been."

Ranma was pensive for a moment. "Just out of curiosity, Granny, how hard have you tried? I mean, have you ever pushed him anywhere near as hard as you did me, during that business with the Phoenix Pill?"

"No. Why do you ask?"

"Cause it might be what he needs," he answered.

The Matriarch said nothing in reply, but she gave him the widest-eyed stare he'd ever seen on her. It quickly had him shifting uneasily beneath her gaze. "What?" he eventually asked. "Why're you staring at me like that?"

"If I lived to be eight hundred I never expected to hear you say that," she marveled. "You actually agree with the lengths I went to then?"

"Well, no," Ranma said frankly. "But some good came out of it. I learned the Amaguriken, and I managed to overcome my stupid phobia enough to deliberately use the Cat Fist. Never did that before then. And—" He clamped his lips shut against the rest of it, realizing suddenly that this might not be the best place to finish that particular sentence. There might well come a day to tell Cologne how glad he was to know Shampoo would stand with him even in such circumstances as that, but this was not that day.

"And yet you'll still suggest pushing that hard for Mousse, even though ultimately you don't think I should have done it to you?"

"Well, yeah," he explained. "He's wrong. I wasn't."

"Ah, youth," Cologne grumbled under her breath. "I will admit that the thought has crossed my head from time to time. But everything I've seen leads me to believe that if _I_ push him, he will simply push back, even to the very end of his strength." She gave Ranma a piercing look. "The most I could do is make things generally harder on him, which might mean that he'd be more vulnerable to attack from another direction."

The pigtailed teen chewed over that for a minute, unsure whether to be proud that Cologne seemed to be implying that he might be able to do something she couldn't, or worried. "You really think that, Granny?" he asked. "You really think that even if he won't listen to you, maybe he could still learn if it was someone else who broke through his stubborn, stupid pride?"

"Perhaps," Cologne said. "If you're thinking of trying, feel free. I'm always here if you'd like advice about dealing with an Amazon."

He stood silently for another little while, pondering the situation with Mousse (and also illustrating that while he might be doing better at picking up on hidden meanings, he was by no means perfect at it yet). "Actually I've got an idea. Lemme run it by you, and see what you think."

-----------------------

Kasumi hummed a light, cheerful tune as she strung the laundry out to dry. It almost felt a little odd to be working on her own, rather than with Nodoka's help, but in a way it made for a restful break. The two had spent more time than usual talking during the morning, so much so that even with both of them working they had fallen behind on the chores. And so it was that Nodoka had gone to take care of the afternoon shopping while Kasumi stayed behind to finish up with this task.

"Kasumi, have you seen Mr. Saotome?" Akane asked, coming around the clothesline and into Kasumi's field of vision. Her youngest sister was wearing a gi and a puzzled, vaguely irritated look. "It's not much longer until our training session, but he's nowhere around."

"He went with Auntie to the market, so that she wouldn't have to carry the heavier groceries herself." When you were cooking to feed Saotomes, you were talking about a lot of supplies. Kasumi well remembered the times when it had been just her doing the shopping and she had fallen too far behind. Playing catch-up had always been a little embarrassing, but at least that nice Mr. Ishikawa had never charged her for the use of his forklift.

"Oh," Akane said, her voice so cold and flat that Kasumi was reminded of something she'd been meaning to bring up at a safe moment.

This moment was probably as good as it was going to get. "Akane, did something happen between you and Auntie?"

"Why do you ask, big sister?"

"Because your last cooking lesson was four days ago, and you haven't seemed interested in having another. And even more than that, I haven't seen her look interested either, and she was always the more enthusiastic of you two. Also, Auntie Nodoka has been spending even more time than usual lately talking to me, but less and less of that time has been her talking to me about you, or Nabiki for that matter." Kasumi pursed her lips. "I'm not sure what it is, exactly, but something feels different. Something _is_ different. And I'd like you to tell me what it is if you know, Akane."

The youngest Tendo shrugged. "She's probably still ticked off at me for telling her to her face that I wasn't going to let Ranma string along a bunch of mistresses," she said as casually as she could, which meant that only a fair amount of bitterness leaked through. "For that horrible crime I had to sit through a lecture on what it really means to be a man—as if she has any idea!—and being grateful to have a sneaky, cheating, untrustworthy, perverted jerk like Ranma in my life."

Kasumi blinked. "She said that? Those words?"

Akane sighed. "No, Kasumi, those were mine. Not hers." For a moment she looked vaguely uneasy. "You don't need to repeat that actual phrase to anybody, by the way."

It was Kasumi's turn to sigh. "Actually I knew that was your take on things, little sister. I just wanted to see if I could get you to stop and think about what you said."

It was Akane's turn to blink. "What's to stop and think about? I... I'm not saying he doesn't have his good points too." Her voice faltered and softened as she spoke that last line, and it took her a few seconds to firm it up and speak decisively again. "But you'd have to be as deliberately blind as Mrs. Saotome to overlook his bad ones!"

"And how deliberately blind would you have to be, to look at those bad points and think they were really so much bigger than the good?" Kasumi shot back. When she saw her little sister's jaw set mulishly, she sighed and continued, "Akane, I need you to understand something. There is never going to be peace in our household until you manage to see Ranma as he really is. Of course he has his problems! Who wouldn't? He grew up with only his father for a point of stability, never having any other experience with family, almost no friends, never even having a place to stay that he knew he wasn't going to have to leave before long. Ranma should have our admiration, not our contempt, for the strength that brought him out of that without being worse than just rough and unpolished. You've never given him as much credit as he deserves."

Akane was quiet for a long time. Just as Kasumi was on the verge of breaking the silence again, the youngest Tendo finally sighed, and said, "Maybe you're right, big sister. At least, maybe you're right that I'm being too hard on him now. I think maybe I'm letting some of how I feel about his mother overflow onto him. And I shouldn't do that."

"I'm very glad to hear that, Akane," Kasumi said encouragingly. It was all the more important to hear Akane make an admission like that when she considered what her little sister _hadn't_ been doing lately. She hadn't been yelling at Ranma, or hitting him, or otherwise trying to punish him. To hear Akane acknowledge that even without doing that she still might not be treating Ranma as well as he deserved, to see that she could admit that when it was merely a question of her personal thoughts... well, as far as Kasumi was concerned, it was real progress. "And what about the other things I said...?"

"I'll think about them," Akane replied in a tone much less conciliatory than she'd used for her last response. "But he's sure as heck never given me that kind of credit either, you know. No matter how hard I try." She looked away from her sister, toward the dojo, and tried to fight off a premonition that she wasn't going to get what she wanted this afternoon. "I hope Mr. Saotome doesn't take too long to get back."

-----------------------

A little earlier...

Nodoka looked with unmistakable pride on her manly son, smiling all the wider at his distinct 'caught with my hand in the pocky jar' expression. Discretion was all very well and good, but there was no need for him to keep such secrets here; it was just her and Genma who'd run into him in a back-alley shortcut to the market. "Ranma dear, you wouldn't be sneaking away for a meeting that you planned to keep secret from everyone back at the dojo, now would you?"

"Uh... I... er... ah..."

The Saotome matron smiled all the wider. "So which one is it? Ukyo? Shampoo? Both?"

Ranma would have liked to reply and clear himself of all charges, but he was too busy choking. It took a few seconds to recover, and as soon as he did he was distracted by Genma. The elder Saotome had taken a couple of steps backward so that he was no longer in Nodoka's peripheral vision, then began a routine that Ranma had thought he'd seen the last of. The signs flashed too quickly for him to read without focusing all his attention on the task, which meant they didn't get read. He did catch enough phrases to be sure this wasn't anything new, though—just the same old 'you've already got a fiancée that I said you're going to marry... now go knuckle under to her!' story. _'If the old man's gonna keep on using the same thing over and over, he better expect me to take advantage of the predictability,' _Ranma decided. "Yo, Pop, was there something you wanted to say?" he asked, pulling Nodoka's attention off him and onto her husband.

"Oh, nothing really. Just that I hope you'll make me proud, Boy," Genma shot back, having somehow managed to hide all the signs in the quarter-second between Nodoka turning and her actually catching sight of him. Ranma was more than a little impressed, and made a mental note not to hold back in their next sparring match.

"I'm sure he'll make both of us proud," Nodoka proclaimed. "Here, Son, you wouldn't want to be unprepared." Saying this, she stepped forward and pressed a large packet into his hand.

Automatically Ranma's hand closed over it and his eyes tracked down to it. "GYAAHH! Mom, what's this?"

"You don't have to use them if you're ready to become a father, dear," she assured him. Of course, whether or not he thought that, her wonderful son certainly was ready, just as Nodoka was ready, willing, and eager to hold her first grandchild in her arms. It had taken quite some time to unnoticeably perforate all the condoms, reseal the package, and eliminate the outer marks of her tampering, but if it helped bring about that blessed event sooner it would have been hours well spent.

_'Note to self—don't let Mom get started on one of these trips. Head her off as quickly as possible.' _Without really thinking about it, Ranma stowed the incredibly embarrassing gift in the backpack he was wearing, shoving it next to the sack of balloons. "Uh, Mom, I hope it ain't gonna disappoint you, but I'm actually on my way to a challenge match."

Nodoka blinked. "Oh? Then why didn't you tell us? Shouldn't we all come along to watch you win?"

"Not this time," he answered. He hesitated for a moment longer, but couldn't see any advantage to keeping it secret who he was actually fighting. "This is a guy who goes in for lots an' lots of long range attacks, and his eyesight ain't too good. If there's a buncha people there watching, I might not be able to protect myself and the spectators too from all the stuff he's gonna miss me with."

"Mousse? That's who you're fighting?" Genma interjected. "Are you saying he's back in town?"

"Yep."

"About blasted time," the elder Saotome grumbled under his breath, then flinched—for more reasons than one—when Ranma shot him an ugly glare.

"So, anyway, Mom. That's why I didn't say anything about this match. Don't tell anyone back at the dojo, okay? They'd probably be disappointed about not gettin' to see it, and it's better all around not to have that happen."

"Still, you ought to have at least one friendly person there to cheer you on and watch you win," Nodoka fretted.

Genma nodded, sensing where she was going with this. "I agree wholeheartedly," he pronounced. _'Of course if it's Mousse the boy's fighting, there's bound to be one person watching who fits that bill... but I don't think we want it to just be Shampoo in Ranma's corner. Much better for everyone if we call home and send Akane along with him.'_ With the progress she'd made, he was confident that his student was capable of defending herself from Mousse's random attacks.

Nodoka beamed. "Good, it's settled then. Genma will accompany you and stand witness."

"What!" "What!" The cries started out synchronized but quickly broke into competing protests, Ranma that as a healthy teenaged guy he needed times without any parental supervision, Genma that this was a job for Akane. "Besides, Nodoka dearest, you need me to help carry home the groceries for tonight's dinner! You can't haul such a heavy load all by yourself!"

"Now, now, I'm going to have to insist," Nodoka said back, in a voice that somehow managed to be perfectly lighthearted and pleasant despite reminding both Saotome men of the slamming of a prison door. This wasn't merely what his wife wanted, Genma realized glumly, it was The Way Things Were.

Ranma heaved a long-suffering sigh, then inclined his head. "Well, I gotta get going, Mom. It's gonna be a good while before I make it home, but don't worry—I won't miss supper at least."

"Do you think you had to tell me that?" she replied, eyes twinkling. "All right, Ranma, Genma, I'll see you when you get back. Good luck, Ranma, and remember not to crush his pride beyond any hope of recovery. After all, you want him to keep coming back and giving you new challenges, don't you?"

"Honestly, Mom, I'm not sure I'd say that for this particular guy," he admitted. "But... yeah, I'm not gonna destroy the idiot or nothing." He stepped forward and gave her a quick hug, then turned and headed off, Genma trudging behind him.

Ranma waited until they'd covered six blocks before he came to a stop. "Pop, Mom might not've been ready to take no for an answer back there, but that don't mean you ought to be tagging along. Why don'tcha call back to the dojo and get Mr. Tendo to meet you at a bar? Or maybe have Akane train with you in a park or something?"

Genma frowned at him. "Is there some reason you don't want me along, Ranma?"

The boy in question shrugged. "Already told ya. I don't want anyone there to maybe get perforated when Mousse starts doing his 'it's raining pain' thing."

"And you don't think I can take care of myself?" the elder Saotome demanded indignantly.

"Look, this fight ain't gonna be like the usual ones with Mousse," Ranma shot back. "He's had all this time to stew over the fact that Shampoo and I've got the same curse, and what's more that she deliberately gave it to me. For this challenge, he specifically said we go at it in our cursed forms, falcon against duck, an' I think you can realize what that means just as easily as I could."

Genma pulled off his glasses and polished them thoughtfully. "You mean it's going to be a midair battle? With those Hidden Weapons tricks that half-blind boy uses? Ranma, you'd darn well better tell me you said you wouldn't fight him unless it was over some unpopulated area!"

"Actually we're gonna have the fight over the Imperial Palace," Ranma managed to say with a straight face. He couldn't keep it up long though, not when Genma looked to be on the verge of a simultaneous stroke, heart attack, apoplexy, and bowel blowout. "Geez, old man, what kind of idiot do you take me for? Of course we're gonna do it way out in the middle of nowhere! And now that you know we're gonna be fighting in the sky, you realize there won't be anything you can really watch, right?"

"Nevertheless, I'm coming," Genma said, doing his best to duplicate Nodoka's tone from earlier.

Ranma snorted. "Well, okay, Pop. Have it your way." He grinned. "But if you want to come with me, you're gonna have to keep up with me!" And with that he bounced to a nearby rooftop, pouring on the speed as soon as he'd touched down from his first leap, rocketing up, up, and away. By the time his father's bellowing cry of protest reached his ears he was already three houses farther off and two stories higher.

Genma made his own way onto the rooftops in pursuit, but Ranma quickly outdistanced him. The pigtailed teen wasn't all that surprised, truth be told; he'd been going all out, and it would have been very surprising indeed if his father could have kept up with him. Since that was true, it wasn't hard to believe that Genma would give up sooner rather than later. Still, Ranma didn't drop his guard or settle down into an easy-to-follow path, taking instead a winding, roundabout route as he headed toward his next stop.

It was more than a little annoying to find Genma waiting for him at the train station.

"You wound me, Ranma," his father complained. "Not only do you try and ditch your only father, you've even left behind the wisdom I so carefully passed along to you!"

"Left your wisdom and teachings behind?" Ranma shot back with a glare. "How'd you figure that? This doesn't have anything to do with an all-you-can-eat buffet."

"Oh, hardy har har!" Genma retorted. "Boy, stop and think for a minute about what just happened. You ran full-out to try and lose me, not even thinking for a second that you'd already given me enough information to guess where you were headed. Just how much of your energy did you burn anyway? How much more would you have used up, if I'd actually kept up the chase as long as I could?" He leveled his fiercest glare at Ranma. "I taught you better than to pull something like that before a fight!"

Ranma grimaced. "You'd have a point there, Pop, IF I was headin' straight in to fight Mousse. But our match isn't until three in the afternoon."

Genma frowned, puzzled at that. He kept one eye on Ranma as he scanned the train schedule, confirming that what he'd thought was true. "That's over two hours away, Ranma. You could get to a suitable place for a fight like this in less than thirty minutes from here, if you rode on the train that's about to leave."

The pigtailed boy frowned thoughtfully, his gaze fixing on the train as its doors slid shut. "Really? You sure about that?" When his father snorted and nodded, he said, "Well, it ain't like I had a schedule of all the Tokyo trains handy when I set the time and place for the fight."

"And checking that schedule today before you decided when you needed to leave would have been too much trouble?" Genma asked as the train began to move. "Well, fine. Let's take a few minutes and talk about this fight, and Mousse, and the Amazons in general."

"What's there to talk about?" Ranma said with a casual shrug, his gaze tracking past his father. "Anyway, shouldn't you be asking them? There's Shampoo and the old ghoul coming in at the front gate now." His eyes widened. "Whoa, I had no idea Shampoo was gonna bring _that_ much take-out ramen!"

"Really?" Genma said, whirling around and scanning the crowd.

By the time he realized he'd been played like a piano, it was almost too late.

He didn't even have time to confirm that his guess was correct. It took every last second he had available to whirl around again, sprint for the departing train, and jump to a safe landing on the very edge of the final section. Not until he'd made sure of his stability was he able to take a moment to look ahead and realize that, yes, Ranma was standing at a spot two cars down. His son was staring irritably back at him and rubbing at his temples, as if to massage away a headache. Genma fantasized for a few moments about giving the ungrateful whelp something he'd _really_ feel in the morning, but reminded himself that the time for that was absolutely not when Ranma was on his way to a fight... especially a fight with the most bloodthirsty of his regular rivals.

"Are you going to quit this nonsense now, Boy?" he hollered.

"I wonder how much trouble it'd be to unlock the last coupla cars off this thing," Ranma mused. "It didn't look like there were too many people inside to get inconvenienced by a nice little break."

That was Genma's cue to hurry forward until he was on the same car as his son, stopping just far enough away not to be caught off-guard by a quick sneak attack. "Ranma, I'm getting a little fed up with this!"

"Yeah?" Ranma said evenly, his tone contrasting nicely to Genma's temper. "Then why don't you give it up? I hope you don't think I missed what you said, back when Mom was sayin' somebody ought to come along and watch this fight. You didn't want to come; you wanted me to have to drag Akane along for the ride, so she'd be there to smack me around if Shampoo so much as looked like smiling at me and saying she wanted me to win. Well, that was a bunch of bull and Mom sendin' you along wasn't much better. You oughta be heading home right now so you can give that tomboy her afternoon training. She needs it a heck of a lot more than I need you here looking over my shoulder, and I really shouldn't have to lecture you about a sensei's duty to his student."

The words hit hard, much harder than Genma was prepared for. "R- Ranma," he said feebly, taking one faltering step toward his son.

Unfortunately, he'd lost all semblance of the control and focus needed to stay on top of a speeding bullet train. They were passing across the bridge over a deep canyon, the kind of place where unpredictable crosswinds could make their presence known. A stronger one than usual chose to roar in that very moment when Genma's balance was most precarious, knocking him off his feet and off the train.

Ranma stared in mild shock as Genma was swept into the void. He would have been more worried had he not seen his father almost immediately regain control of his fall. The old man might come out of this with a few bruises, but Ranma would cheerfully wager all the yen in his savings that Genma wouldn't get any worse than that. Still, he noted, that had been one heck of an odd coincidence, the wind picking that exact moment to gust so fiercely and send his father flying. As convenient as it had been for him, it certainly hadn't been his doing. He hesitated for a moment, then spent the next fifteen minutes cautiously peering down into the windows of the train, but found no sign of Shampoo or Cologne.

-----------------------

His early arrival at the site of the match gave him plenty of time to set up the hot water dispenser, take care of a few other preparations, and spend an hour in the sky familiarizing himself with the air currents of this location. He landed and changed back when there was roughly a quarter of an hour to go until the appointed time, which he spent brushing up on all the things he would have liked to say to Mousse during this fight, if only Jusenkyo's translation effect extended far enough to let a duck and falcon understand each other. Not that Ranma expected there was any chance of that happening; after all, Shampoo hadn't been able to understand Mousse when they were in their old cursed forms, and his late, unlamented girl side had certainly never heard any sense in P-chan's outraged squeals and grunts.

_'Of course, you could almost say the same thing about Ryoga when he's in his regular body,'_ Ranma thought with a grin. The smile wasn't really due to the humor of his joke, such as it was, but simply because he now felt free to make such a joke at Ryoga's expense. Cologne had told him yesterday that she'd happened across the Lost Boy and provided him his cure, which meant that the last vestige of one of his big failures had finally been washed away. It would be interesting to see how their next brawl went down, though Ranma supposed the smart money was on Ryoga still finding some excuse to play the righteous avenger. _'But at least with his curse gone he won't be randomly showing up in the middle of my fight today.' _

-----------------------

Ryoga paused, fighting off an odd sensation that there was someplace else he should be, something else he needed to do. That was nonsense, he reminded himself as he returned his concentration to the boulder and the soil surrounding it. Mastering the secrets of the Earth was the only important thing in his life right now. He needed to be able to safely pass them along to Akane, and for her sake the sooner the better.

It would also be nice if he could use this style to finally put Ranma in his place, but Ryoga wasn't kidding himself—he might get some victories, but this wasn't going to let him blow past his rival for good and all. He had to develop these new techniques all on his own, whereas Ranma had all the Amazon help he could want. If Cologne hadn't already warned her 'son-in-law' of Ryoga's new training and got the jerk learning countermeasures, he'd eat a dozen of his bandanas. The playing field had never, _ever_ been level, and that wasn't going to change. Ryoga was never going to win if he didn't find a new way to fight.

Giving Akane what she needed, what she wanted, what she deserved, what Ranma couldn't be bothered to... that sounded like it might just do the trick.

And so he pushed aside his sudden urge to wander off in search of Akane, or Ranma, or even any other human being, and focused all his awareness into the task before him. A grimace of concentration, a surge of power, and the earth groaned, shifted, then spat up the two halves of what had been one man-sized stone. Ryoga grinned in triumph at the sight. The break in the rock was clean, almost as if done by a knife—the result of the earth shifting along a tiny, temporary fault-line Ryoga himself had created. Of course he wouldn't use this technique directly against an opponent, but he was sure he could eventually refine it to use multiple intersecting fault-lines, which ought to disperse the attack enough to simply knock someone out rather than slicing them in half.

"This is for you, Akane," he murmured after a brief rest period. Focusing his will, he sunk another nearby boulder into the ground, and began building another fault-line. The single-fault technique was working now, but he couldn't do it quickly enough yet to think about moving on to multiple ones. "No matter how long it takes, no matter how much I suffer, I'll do this for you."

-----------------------

_'I wonder what old Bacon Breath is up to anyway,'_ Ranma mused. _'Probably bugging some grandmaster he randomly ran into, to teach him a new trick to beat me once and for all.'_ He snorted. _'I mean, geez, Ryoga, you could've at least told Cologne to pass a 'thank you' along to me. Maybe when I do finally run into you again and we have our next fight, I oughta try and pound it through your head that the P-chan stuff wasn't the only thing that needed to change.'_ Perhaps it would help if he was up front with his own mistakes, if he acknowledged straight out to Ryoga that Ranma himself had been guilty too long of just sticking to the same old patterns. If someone as great as him could make that mistake, admit to it, and walk away, then it shouldn't be so hard for Ryoga to follow his lead.

This wasn't really the time to be thinking about the Lost Boy, though, he reminded himself. There were much more important things at hand, such as the four figures appearing through the trees just in time for the fight. Wait—_four_ figures?

As Shampoo, Mousse, Cologne, and Genma entered the clearing, Ranma bit back an oath. _'Of all the times for the old man to finally start putting out effort he didn't need to, not to mention using his brain...'_ "Yo, Pop. Glad to see you're alive," he said, his tone making it brutally clear that what was true for 'still with us' was by no means true for 'with us right here and now'.

"I caught up with the Amazons just in time to tag along with them," Genma muttered. It looked for a moment as if he would say something else, but finally the elder Saotome just sighed and kept quiet.

Ranma kept his gaze on his father for several long minutes, glad at least that Genma wasn't trying to meet his eye. That left him free to concentrate on his peripheral vision, keeping up the appearance of concentrating on Genma while focusing on someone else entirely.

Even as he was staring at Genma, Shampoo was staring at him. He was pretty sure, however, that she wasn't just using this as an excuse to consider someone else. Whatever lingering ill-humor she might be feeling at Mousse's return, there was no sign of it now. She was smiling at him, a small mysterious smile rather than the big open ones or the sneaky mischievous ones he'd seen more often. It looked like a pretty good reaction so far, Ranma decided. She didn't seem angry that he hadn't sought her out since their aborted training yesterday. She wasn't wearing the Smirk of Triumph which she would have if she assumed he was ready to jump right ahead to fulfilling her wildest fantasies. Even the fact that it wasn't her usual big, cheerful, open smile might be a good sign, he thought—hopefully it indicated that she had come to the same conclusion he did: things had finally changed for real, but that didn't mean it was time for the two of them to run heedless and headlong down an unfamiliar path.

"Looks like you didn't need quite this much time after all," Mousse sneered. "Are you ready for this, Saotome?"

"Yeah, sure, whatever," Ranma said, turning his attention to Mousse. He was actually a little relieved that the half-blind boy had pushed forward like that, which meant he could shift his supposed focus straight from Genma to the other male newcomer. "I'd ask you the same question, except there's no way in the world you are."

"Just keep telling yourself that." Mousse shook his head. "Go ahead and get changed. I'll even let you be the first one into the air."

"You're too kind," Ranma said, trying to channel Nabiki for maximum sarcastic power. "So... you wanna say the fight starts once we're both five hundred feet up?"

"And it ends when I finally drag your honorless, defeated carcass down here and lay it at Shampoo's feet," Mousse retorted.

"Mousse, Anything Goes means I'm supposed to accept all challenges, but that only goes so far. I don't have to take one that's never gonna end," Ranma shot back with a smirk.

"Would you just—!"

"Mousse. Ranma. Enough is enough," Cologne said, her tone cutting easily through Mousse's sputtered outrage. "Both of you, take it upside."

Ranma noted that for all her supposed seriousness the Matriarch hadn't hesitated to slip in her own witty remark. "Whatever you say, Granny," he said, bending down and pulling a flask of cold water out of his backpack. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Mousse produce a water balloon and break it over his head. That was Ranma's cue to douse himself as well. The falcon and duck slipped out of their clothes at the same time, and each paused to give the other whatever approximation of a glare his current form could muster.

"I'm taking you down, Mousse!" Ranma screeled, more as an experiment than an actual taunt.

"I've got no idea what you just said, you bastard. And it doesn't matter anyway. This time I'm taking you down!" Mousse quacked furiously back.

_'Well, that's one theory confirmed,'_ Ranma thought. He hadn't understood a word of that. Not that he supposed it had been anything worth listening to.

With no further ado, both transformed teens blasted into the air. "Kick his butt, Ranma!" Shampoo cheered, earning herself a glare from Cologne. She ignored it. Just because she'd agreed with what her great-grandmother had said, about showing mercy to Mousse rather than giving him the treatment his latest antics had earned, didn't mean she was going to let the idiot off scot-free. If it weren't for him, she and Ranma would already have taken a step that was long, long overdue. A step they probably weren't even going to get to take today, she reminded herself as she shot Genma a hard glance. He was too busy staring up after his vanishing son, and didn't notice. Just as well, in Shampoo's opinion. She wanted it to be a surprise, when she handed the ex-panda his reward for sticking his unwanted nose into Ranma's and her business.

Genma felt a fresh trill of fear along the back of his neck, which was hardly unexpected. He'd been feeling them for quite some time now. Mousse hadn't had much to say, hadn't paid any attention to Genma at all during their trek out here, but the elder Saotome had kept close watch on his body language and hadn't liked what he saw. "Be careful, Son," he whispered. "And come back to me safe."

-----------------------

Mousse lost track of his hated opponent almost immediately. It came as no surprise. He hadn't needed Ranma 'God's Poisoned Gift to Women' Saotome to tell him that a falcon was faster in the air than a duck. But that wasn't going to matter, he promised himself once again. This was it, the last duel, the final conflict, the battle that paid for all the times his damnable rival had managed to squeak by with victory.

He settled into a slowly-rising, outward-spiraling path, gaining altitude at a steady pace rather than the skyrocketing scramble he'd only halfway glimpsed from Ranma. His opponent could have as much as a thousand feet of altitude on him by now, but Mousse didn't let that bother him. He was the one with the ranged attacks, after all. If Ranma wanted to win this fight, he was going to have to do it just like the bird whose shape he wore—by diving out of the heavens to strike his prey with closed talons. What was more, Mousse knew very well that his rival would only attack with enough force to knock the fight out of him. The egotistical fool wouldn't even consider any other kind of victory; hell, he probably wouldn't even see it as victory at all if he couldn't gloat over his defeated, helpless adversary afterward. No, even though Ranma might physically be capable of stooping down with greater speed than Mousse could handle, he'd never do it. Such force as that would be lethal, since at this height even a simple knockout translated into eternal sleep. The only way for Ranma to win would be by wearing his rival down with quick, light blows.

That same restriction hardly applied to Mousse.

"Where are you, Saotome?" he quacked furiously, after five minutes had passed. It wasn't unusual for Ranma to let his opponent make the first move, but surely he wasn't trying that strategy now. "Come on out and fight!"

Almost before he had finished speaking, he sensed a shadow pass overhead. There was time for just a split second of triumph, as the awareness hadn't come from his human mind. No, it was the instincts of the body he wore that had sensed the predator, the insights that were normally buried too deep for a cursed victim to reach. All that time spent meditating to gain access to them had paid off.

No sooner had that thought entered his mind than it exited again, hustled out by a warning from a different sense—the whistling sound of an object descending rapidly through the air. It was still far enough away that Mousse had time to spin in a very quick loop-the-loop, catching a blurred glimpse of an incoming darkish roundish blob.

Just as he'd thought, it was moving much slower than would be the case if Ranma had dived from a thousand feet higher. Mousse would even have had time to come out of his loop and dodge, except that would be pointless against his far more maneuverable foe. No, it was time to once again prove a couple of old sayings: "The best defense is a good offense", and "Obstacles are for killing".

He waited one second longer, to let Ranma pass the point of no return, then twisted for another loop-the-loop. However, this time he sprouted thirty different knives, each of them light as a feather and sharp as a razor, and all of them tied to strings which still extended back into the depths of his Hidden Weapons storage space. With a scream that would have sounded much more impressive out of a different species of throat, Mousse spun like a buzz saw, whipping the blades through the air to lacerate his incoming enemy.

The water balloon shattered most satisfactorily, at least from Ranma's perspective.

"Wha—?" Mousse didn't even have time to complete the exclamation before he felt the familiar shifting of a Jusenkyo change crawl over him. Absolute panic skated through his mind. He was already too high up in the sky to live through a fall! So that was Saotome's plan—splash him with Instant Gerbil water or something, knowing that the only way Mousse could survive was by letting the bastard catch him and carry him safely to the ground! For a moment the panic was displaced by seething regret, that he hadn't realized ahead of time how far Ranma would really sink for his kind of victory.

Panic quickly surged its way to the forefront once more, as his flight was transformed into freefall. And with that panic came mindless, instinctive response, as Mousse spread his wings once more and regained control of his flight.

_' What the hell? ' _he thought, barely managing that much coherence. Wings? Flight? Hadn't he lost both of them just a second ago?

"Yo, Mousse!" Ranma's call broke through the worst of his confusion, though the fact that he'd actually _understood _it threatened to push his mind back into the chaotic abyss. "You about ready to do this for real?"

"What have you done to me, Saotome!"

Ranma rolled his eyes and shook his head, despite the fact that it was probably the biggest wasted gesture of his life. "Ain't it obvious? I just hit you with a balloon full of Instant Falcon water. Hey, by the way, thanks for leaving the crate full of powders just sitting out in the bathroom like that."

He paused, staring down and to the left across the hundred feet that separated him from Mousse, studying the black-and-white mottled bird (and noting, with some satisfaction, that here at last was someone whose cursed falcon form wasn't larger than his). The other boy had leveled off quickly into smooth flight, but that didn't seem to be the case any longer. Mousse wasn't exactly struggling to stay in the air, but nobody with Ranma's experience would have categorized his flight now as smooth or skilled. "Hey, you okay?"

For a long, long moment Mousse didn't say anything in reply... and then, just as Ranma was about to risk flying closer and asking again, the Chinese boy erupted into nearly the worst spate of profanity Ranma had ever heard. The only worse time had been when he was six years old, watching Genma take on all those dockworkers in a really impressive barroom brawl. The moves his father had used weren't even close to being the most educational part of that experience, he remembered, enjoying the nostalgic memories as the worst of Mousse's fury spent itself.

"Don't hold back or nothing, Mousse!" he called as the neo-falcon paused for breath. "Tell me how you really feel!" This time he was distracted from Mousse's reply by a different odd sense of familiarity. It took a minute to realize that he'd used similar words awhile back with Shampoo, after she got done telling him just what she thought of him focusing too much on Akane when he was spending time with her. He remembered as well that the lambasting she'd given him then, although not even registering on the same scale as the one Mousse was giving now, had hit far harder. _'I wonder if I'd started falling for her even that far back. Hard to say,'_ he mused. He knew he still had a long, long way to go before he could really master all this emotional stuff, and certainly back then his skills with it had been even less polished.

"How can you do it, Saotome? How can you keep on surprising me with how much lower and lower you manage to sink?" Mousse might have run out of epithets, but he had by no means exhausted his vitriol. "I spent _three damn weeks_ training to use that body for midair fighting, three weeks pushing myself to the limit to master every attack and technique I thought up while I was stuck in that pool! I nearly worked my wings off, getting ready to take you down even in a body like that, and you just... just... just take it all away without even thinking about it for a second!"

"Well, boo freaking hoo," Ranma shot back. "I might be feeling a little guiltier if you didn't say you spent _all_ the time you were gone in the Spring of Drowned Carp, rather than just some of it."

"I never actually said that," Mousse spat, altering his flight to approach closer to the sound of Ranma's voice. "I just let you think it."

"Oh, that's a real good comeback," Ranma observed. "You think maybe you might have missed my point there?"

"Just like you missed mine, that you're an honorless, thoughtless slimeball who couldn't care less about how hard anyone else has to work? Damn you, did you even stop to think what else this kind of change means to me? I can't use my regular glasses when I'm a duck, you know that—and the same thing goes here!" Mousse gestured angrily with one wing-tip toward the oversized glasses barely resting on his beak. The same trick that worked to keep them in place when he was a duck—keeping the very ends of the earpieces stuck within his personal weaponspace—served here, but that didn't really qualify as good news. "I can barely see anything at all through these!"

"So ditch them and put on one of the pairs you made for this body," Ranma suggested.

"And what pairs would those be?" Mousse asked bitterly.

As the implications struck him, Ranma sighed as loudly as he could, and even spared a tiny Wind Strike to hopefully carry the disgusted sound all the way to Mousse. "Let me guess. Even though you came back planning to spend time as a falcon, you didn't bother making that particular preparation." He didn't bother to wait for confirmation. "You know, Mousse, I have never even come close to being your worst enemy. You've got that title nailed down so hard, nobody's _ever_ going to take it away."

"Shut up!" Mousse yelled, sending a flight of knives winging toward Ranma's voice.

The Saotome heir dodged the volley with no real difficulty. Unlike the last time Mousse had tried this attack, Ranma was close enough to notice that the knives were still tied to his Amazon adversary. "Not a bad trick, Mousse," he called out. "But you didn't even come close."

"Is that supposed to surprise me?" Mousse asked, this question even more bitter than the last. A quick but clumsy spin allowed him to bring the knives back along their anchor lines, vanishing into his feathers as if they had never been. "You took away the body I spent all my time practicing in, the instincts it would have given me to sense natural predators, and even stole what little sight I would have had!"

"Yeah, and while you're at it go ahead and blame me for not being a mind reader!" Ranma sighed and absently dodged another volley from Mousse. The physical side of this battle was proving even easier than he'd expected. Of course, that wasn't the real victory he was shooting for here; if he were, he would have already knocked Mousse out of the sky with the Wind Strike.

"You don't honestly expect me to believe you'd have done anything different if you'd known all this!" Mousse countered, launching yet another flight of knives. Ranma didn't even need to dodge this one. "Hell, you probably did! You probably went after Shampoo yourself last night, and saw me flying along as blind as a bat! You probably already _knew_ that these things are worse than useless for me in this body!"

Ranma frowned. "Worse than useless? Then why the heck are you still wearing them?"

"For Shampoo!" the Chinese boy yelled. "I was a stubborn, prideful idiot for way too long, refusing to wear them because I wanted to look good for her! I didn't even let myself realize that she just thought that was stupid, not brave. Well, I'm not going to be that stupid any more; I wore them all last night, and I'll wear them now and fight like this! No matter how many cheap shots you take against me, Saotome!"

"Why would I need to take any? You're already doing such a good job of landing them on yourself." Ranma sighed. "Seriously, man, listen to what you're saying. Wearing those things is actually handicapping you, but you're doing it anyway 'for Shampoo'? That's no different from what you were doing before, when you didn't wear them. For Shampoo." He packed as much sarcasm into those last two words as he could.

Mousse trembled in rage, but couldn't deny that there was some sense to Ranma's words—a fact which made them all the more bitter. He turned the thought over and over in his head, under the cover of another wildly inaccurate attack. A few more of those, especially combined with a few more minutes of ultimately pointless talk, and his enemy's underestimation of him ought to reach critical mass...

But even if he could catch Ranma completely off-guard, a quiet voice whispered from the back of his mind, it would still be very helpful if he could see. It _had_ been almost a miracle that he found his way back to the restaurant the previous night. Even a little visual improvement could mean the difference between success and failure. And he would never know until he tried.

Ranma tried and failed to smile as he saw Mousse give a flick of his head, his glasses sliding up and vanishing as he did so. It was a tiny, nearly invisible pinprick of reasonableness, but at this moment he'd take what he could get. He banked to the left and opened up a little more distance to his Amazon adversary. He might want Mousse to gain a better chance by losing the spectacles, but that only went so far. He wasn't about to give the boy too good a shot at him.

Once the maneuver was accomplished, he refocused on Mousse. The faux falcon hadn't responded to his sideslip at all; he was still flying straight along on the same course he'd been on. In fact, to Ranma's eye it looked like Mousse was once again flying solely along on autopilot, with his conscious mind tied up on other concerns. "Hey, Mousse! Did that help you any?" he called.

Mousse declined to answer. Ranma called again, and again, and yet again, becoming more puzzled with each cry. Even the shock of getting his cursed body switched for another hadn't hit him this hard. On the other hand, Ranma supposed there was at least a vague possibility that Mousse was faking this entirely, trying to lure him in closer before acknowledging his presence once more.

Deciding not to risk it, Ranma turned and dived. If Mousse really was pretending, he ought to abandon the pose now. That didn't happen, though; the black-and-white bird just kept sailing smoothly along as Ranma made his way into the top of the nearest tree, pulled loose a few twigs, carried them with him back into the air, and dropped them from seventy-five feet above Mousse. Judicious use of the Wind Strike kept them on course as they tumbled through the air to impact on Mousse's head, just hard enough to get his attention. "What? Where?" Mousse exclaimed, finally coming out of his fugue and whipping his head around. "Was that you, Saotome?"

"Yes," Ranma confirmed, giving up enough altitude to come nearly level with Mousse again. "So I'm guessing that losing the glasses helped you? Probably even more than you were expecting?" That was about the only thing he could think of, that could explain why Mousse had been so shell-shocked by the experiment. "You don't have to thank me or anything," he continued modestly. "It's not like I knew that would happen."

"Still, I think I should give you something, to show my appreciation," Mousse replied, his voice quickly regaining the kind of tone Ranma was used to. He flapped furiously, gaining fifty feet of altitude, then sent forth another volley of knives.

Once again Ranma dodged without difficulty. This one had been better aimed than before, but as it was launched from farther away he had more time to evade. It more than evened out. Still, he decided, it might be better to keep the fight at this distance, rather than trying to get much closer. "Nice try!" he called back by way of 'encouragement'.

"I thought so," Mousse replied, the smirk that his face couldn't form escaping through his tone.

Ranma frowned, and started to say something... then snapped his beak shut as his senses screamed a warning. Something was falling through the air above him—and not just one thing, he realized an instant later, but a broad spread of projectiles! Mousse must have thrown them while he was focused on dodging the first attack!

Well, if Duck Boy could do something his foe didn't expect, so could Ranma Saotome. He twisted ninety degrees in midair, called up a powerful Wind Strike, and rode it in a vertical rush. From this head-on perspective he was able to see the incoming objects, which were rounded masses about the size of his head and covered with spiky protrusions. No doubt one would hurt like crazy if it landed on his cranium, Ranma thought. Too bad for Mousse that wasn't going to happen. A second Wind Strike blew aside the ones that were close enough to hit him, as the first carried him up into the cloud of missiles and on toward clearer skies.

Mousse certainly had not been expecting Ranma to try avoiding the attack by flying straight into it, but this time he managed not to let surprise slow him down. He'd prepared for this moment, trained long and hard to be ready. Unfortunately, he'd been in a different body when he did that training, and this cost him a precious fraction of a second. Ranma was already slightly past the worst of the danger when he pulled out the detonator and pressed the big red button.

The bombs still stored in Mousse's weapons space were unaffected. The ones sharing airspace with Ranma exploded, rending the air with their fury.

They came very close to doing the same to Ranma. Luck alone saved him—luck that Mousse had been slower on the trigger than he'd intended, and luck that Mousse had intended to hold their fight in full view of everyone. For a normal fight, it was true that the Chinese boy didn't worry too much about spectators—if they chose to get dangerously close because they wanted to watch, that was their concern—but for a midair battle he hadn't needed Ranma to tell him that his usual attacks would simply cause too much collateral damage. Hence all the practicing he had done with knives that never escaped his reach, and hence the spectator-friendly nature of these bombs. Their shell was actually paper rather than metal, ceramic, or plastic, which meant that while the explosions released a powerful concussive blast, no actual shrapnel was involved.

The force involved was quite punishing enough. Ranma went from a smooth near-vertical climb to an out-of-control tailspin in the blink of an eye. He never was quite sure, afterward, whether he might not have been knocked unconscious for the briefest of moments. Certainly there was a gut-wrenchingly long moment when he had no idea where he was, who he was, or which way was up.

The rush of wind around him and the panic screaming in his skull were enough to bypass his floundering conscious mind and kick-start two sets of instincts: the old, familiar ones that had brought him victorious through so many fights, and the two-month-old ones honed over countless airborne hours. And so, despite the ache and shock that still weighed him down, Ranma spun and dived, flying away from Mousse without even really realizing that was what he was doing.

"Not this time, damn you!" Mousse screamed, wheeling in hot pursuit. "I've fought too hard, too long, and I'm not going to lose this time!" Ranma's far greater proficiency in the air was offset by the lingering effect of the bombs, and the Chinese boy was slowly able to narrow the gap between them. "I've suffered long enough!" he yelled as he closed within knife-on-a-wire distance. Instead of throwing a wide volley, which would have required him to slow down, he launched just one... but that one was perfectly targeted to strike his enemy directly between the wings.

Ranma chose that very instant to sideslip and veer away at a ninety-degree angle, his instincts saving his feathered butt. Mousse bit off a curse and followed quickly after him, releasing the tie on the knife out of his Hidden Weapons space rather than bother pulling it back. Perhaps he ought to thank Ranma for insisting they have this fight over empty forest, suggested the one corner of his mind not totally focused on catching and finally putting an end to his adversary. That corner then had a good laugh at the suggestion.

However, there was one thing he did want to say thanks for, he realized as he continued to gain on his foe. Ranma's course now was a wildly twisting corkscrew of jinks and spins, and under other circumstances Mousse wouldn't even have had a prayer of keeping up. "I really am in your debt, Ranma!" he called out as he launched another knife, once again not bothering to keep it tethered to him. It missed as well, but only by an inch. "You didn't realize any more than I did, that this was one of the curses that has a secondary effect to the magic! If you did, there's no way in hell you would have tried this!"

"What're you talking about?" Ranma yelled back, having finally recovered at least enough for speech. His whole body was still aching, though. He imagined he could feel the pain even in his feathers, and hear the subtle creaks of bone pushed farther than was really wise or good.

"Think about that punk Taro!" Mousse retorted, launching two knives in rapid succession, hoping that if Ranma dodged one he might fly right into the path of the other. It wasn't really surprising when he didn't, Mousse supposed, making a mental note of which direction Ranma did dodge. "Think about how small his wings are and how huge and heavy that monster's body is! He couldn't _possibly_ fly naturally. It's the magic of the curse that lets him do it!"

"And the curse I gave you is helping you out somehow?" Ranma shot back desperately. "Doing something for you it doesn't for me?"

"More or less. I can see! I can see _perfectly!_" Mousse exulted. Then his eyes narrowed. "I can even make out the fact that you're starting to fly a lot more smoothly and easily than you were. Starting to get your second wind, maybe? Not feeling those bombs so much any more? Here—have a second helping!" Despite his words, though, he didn't immediately throw another cloud of incendiaries. Instead, he waited just for a moment, to see which direction Ranma would take as he turned to evade the attack that wasn't even coming yet. Then, and only then, did he launch another carpet bombing, a larger one this time since he didn't have to worry about sneaking the attack off in the one second Ranma was focused on something else.

"Saotome Airborne Anything Goes Desperation Attack! JET STREAM!" That was the meaning Jusenkyo's translation effect carried to Mousse from the split-second squawk that Ranma gave. Almost before that meaning had registered Mousse uttered a squawk of his own, although this one would be much pithier in translation: "What the HELL!"

There was no-one to hear it, though, or at least no-one to understand it. Ranma was already well out of earshot, having blazed away at speeds that left Mousse doubting his magically-enhanced eyesight.

_' There's no way he could do that! ' _Mousse protested, trying by sheer force of disbelieving will to deny the evidence of his senses. The only possible way Ranma could have gotten a speed boost like that was if he had somehow mastered Hidden Weapons over Mousse's nine-week absence and pulled out an emergency jetpack just now. But that would have left a contrail as evidence, and there was nothing of the sort to be seen... just empty air where the blue-and-black bird had been, only just now receiving the rain of explosives that should have finished him off for good. The bombs continued until they'd flown far enough to activate their fail-safes, at which point they exploded to no effect at all.

Mousse barely even noticed; he was too busy gaping in shock. He spent several moments longer doing so. Then he remembered one crucial thing: Ranma might have vanished from his sight, but that didn't mean he wasn't doubling back to try a sneak attack. Mousse was still reasonably confident that something like that was the only way his foe could manage to scrape a win, which meant that he needed to prevent it at all costs.

He spun through a series of revolutions, scanning every inch of the air above, around, and below him. No sign of Ranma yet, but he could feel it in his bones... his enemy was out there, biding his time, waiting for the perfect moment to strike... Realizing that he'd come dangerously close to the treetops, Mousse soared higher. He stopped when he was satisfied that he was far enough from both the trees below and the clouds above that Ranma couldn't use either to get close enough to surprise him. He couldn't quite decide which one was more likely. Conventional thought would indicate that Ranma would rather attack from above, but he hadn't forgotten how quickly his foe had climbed, during that moment when the louse had almost managed to win past the first bombing run. An attack from below would be just as devastating, if he didn't see it coming in time to respond.

A minute passed, then two, then five. The passage of time brought no sign of Ranma, but it did raise Mousse's levels of anger and frustration higher and higher. By now his enemy had probably recovered from the earlier bombing, and it was going to be difficult to catch him in another. He still had two tricks he'd prepared for this battle that Ranma hadn't yet seen, but he didn't think either one was going to do him any good. The modified stench solution Bi Xinin had been kind enough to give him, that would only affect falcons, was worse than useless now. Another curse to lay at Saotome's feet, er, talons. And smoke that would fill the sky and blind anything might give him a slight advantage, but he doubted he'd have a chance to capitalize on it if Saotome could really flee at such unbelievable speeds.

"Damn you, Ranma!" he yelled as loudly as he could, hoping to draw forth his adversary. "You're not getting away!"

-----------------------

"Man, I can't believe I got away," Ranma muttered, staring down at the clouds far below him. At this height all he could see was their fluffy, peaceful surface, shining so brightly white in the afternoon sun. That same sunlight was warm and comforting on his battered body, helping him ignore the slowly-fading aches that use of his new technique had spawned. "Sure wish I'd had a chance to test that thing out before it was a matter of life and death." Surrounding himself with the strongest, most coherent Wind Strike he could manage and letting it rocket him away had saved his hide, but the pounding he'd taken had been almost as unpleasant as the first brush with Mousse's bombs. Still, it would undoubtedly have been much worse to stay put and take the latest attack head-on.

"This was supposed to be so easy," he muttered disgustedly. "I was going to go in, transform him so he could understand me, keep my distance, use the Wind Strike to knock his weapons aside if I had to, and finally get through to that moron about the stuff he won't let himself see. It was supposed to be just like my last fight with Ryoga, except without all the screw-ups on my part. I got someone as stubborn as him to see that there were things he was doing wrong, things that needed to change; how hard could it be to learn from that and do it with Mousse too, even better than before? After all, he's nowhere near as bad as Ryoga... right?"

The final sentence had been meant to be a positive declaration of fact. Ranma wasn't sure why it had twisted, seemingly of its own accord, into a question at the last. Surely Mousse wasn't as stubborn and clueless as Ryoga had been, was he? After all, in the conflicts with the Lost Boy Akane had only been one point of contention, rather than the be-all and end-all of their rivalry. But with Mousse, every time he'd caused trouble for Ranma, every time he'd pulled some dishonorable trick, it had _always_ been about getting Shampoo for himself...

He'd never really stopped to consider that, come to think of it... funny how the thought suddenly seemed to trigger a slow burn in the pit of his gut...

_'This is NOT the time to pull an Akane!'_ Ranma thought, shaking free of the growing anger as best he could. In point of fact, he wasn't sure that was a fair statement anyway—he didn't think it was jealousy he was feeling, because whatever he might want to share with Shampoo it wasn't like Mousse was standing in his way. Not in any kind of romantic rivalry sense, at least. No, he had to remember what he'd discussed with Cologne, what he'd wanted to finally get through Mousse's thick skull: that Shampoo didn't love him, didn't want him, for damn sure didn't need him interfering in her relationship with Ranma Saotome. No matter how much he loved her, or thought he did, it didn't change those truths, didn't make it okay to keep pursuing her after thirteen years of hearing her say 'no'... didn't begin to excuse him grabbing at any chance that he thought might help him, no matter the cost to anyone else... didn't remotely give him the right to do whatever he damn well pleased if only it might eliminate some other, better choice for Shampoo...

-----------------------

"WHERE ARE YOU, SAOTOME! YOU MISERABLE COWARD, COME OUT AND FIGHT LIKE A MAN!" Despite the cracked fury with which Mousse screamed the words, on the inside he was cold, calm, and calculating. The insults alone might be enough to lure Ranma out of hiding, but combine insults with the ruse of being on the brink of losing all control, and that would make an even stronger lure.

He paused for a few seconds, breathing deeply and giving his throat a chance to recover from the strain of prolonged screeching, while he worked on the next taunt. Maybe something along the lines of Shampoo watching the fight through binoculars and finally seeing how pitiful and pathetic he really was...

"You sure you want that, Mousse?" The call was so distant he almost didn't hear it at all. Only the magic of the Jusenkyo translation effect let him understand it as clearly as if it had been whispered into his ear. "Sure you want me to fight like a man, not a falcon?"

There was a burning anger to Ranma's tone that Mousse couldn't remember ever hearing before. In that moment, though, the fact that he'd pushed his foe to such an extent merely fed his feeling of cold triumph. Swallowing one last time to prepare his throat for another bout of wild screaming, Mousse let loose once more with his best 'bird on the edge' impression. "I WANT YOU TO JUST ONCE FIGHT ME WITH HONOR AND DECENCY, SO I CAN FINALLY SHOW SHAMPOO WHO THE _REAL_ MAN IS HERE!"

"Sounds good to me." Ranma's words drifted down to him with even more venom than before.

Once again, Mousse discounted such irrelevant details. "I see you," he whispered, catching sight of Ranma up and to his left as he dipped down out of the clouds. The distance between them was too great for any of Mousse's attacks to cross, not when it was Ranma who had the altitude advantage. Resolving to correct that problem, Mousse slid into a nearby rising current and flapped as hard as he could to boost his progress.

The thermal vanished beneath him in a way that felt decidedly odd. Unnatural, even. Mousse wasn't given much time to ponder this, though, as a new, stronger wind swept down out of the blue and sent him tumbling beak-over-tailfeathers through the sky.

After a few horrible seconds that wind vanished as well... only to be replaced by an even stronger one, sweeping in from his flank with force that nearly slammed his wings together behind his back. Then another, and another... each wind blasting him from a different direction as the previous one vanished, each hitting harder and lasting less time, until the gusts felt like actual hammer-blows directly from the sky.

They stopped before they could knock him unconscious or strip feathers from his wings. That and the fact that he remained—barely—capable of flight were the only bright spots. The bizarre nature of the onslaught made it seem worse than any beating he'd ever taken before, even the ones that had left him injured worse... and of course the hostile environment meant the stakes were far more dire. The avian Amazon sensed muzzily that even another thirty seconds of... of... whatever the _hell_ that had been would finish him off. It was taking everything he could muster to maintain a shaking, faltering glide.

"There you go, Mousse. That's me, fighting like a man."

The words had come from nearby, easily within striking distance, but Mousse simply couldn't find the strength to do so. Even throwing a single blade was beyond him just now. Hoping to buy time to recover, and still praying that he might get Ranma to underestimate him one last, crucial time, he choked out, "Wha... what was...?"

"The Wind Strike. Second-least powerful technique of the Air style," Ranma said curtly. "Just another part of three thousand years of Amazon history. Except this part fits really, really well with Shampoo's and my curses, so her granny made the call to teach it to her, and she decided to pass it on to me."

"Damn you," Mousse breathed, closing his eyes and trying not to weep. It was still happening... Ranma was still just taking whatever he wanted that should never, _ever_ have been his... should have been Mousse's all along...

He didn't even realize he was muttering those words out loud, at least not until Ranma yelled, "Shut up and listen to me!" The Japanese boy punctuated the remarks with a punch of air to his torso, strong enough to ensure that Mousse had to obey at least one of those commands.

"Should have been yours? Taking something that belonged to you? Where the _hell_ do you think you get off, Mousse!" Ranma roared. "Is this what you think love is supposed to be? I know good and damn well that I'm not the guy with all the answers here, but I can tell you one thing about love. It means you care more about what whoever you love wants, than what you do! You don't just sit back and expect them to do everything your way, give you what you want because you wanting it somehow makes you think you deserve it!"

"H- how dare you... how dare you say that to me..." Mousse was barely able to get the words out through the ache in his chest, but he could no more have stopped them than halted his own heartbeat. "After... all the times you've mistreated her..."

"How can I? Simple," Ranma said remorselessly. "Because I'm not using myself as the example here. No way in the world am _I_ the mark you've had to look at and see you weren't measuring up to."

"I'm glad that's not what you're saying. With as much damage as I'd taken, I'd probably die laughing if you tried," Mousse shot back. All hope of winning this fight had ended when Ranma struck him with that last attack. If his foe wasn't above hitting him when he was this weak, then he wasn't going to give Mousse a chance to recover his fighting strength. "I concede the damn match already. Go fly back to your father, and the old ghoul, and Sh- Shampoo. I'm sure at least two of them will be happy to cheer for you pulling out another unfair, undeserved win."

"You know what? There's so many things wrong with that last sentence that I wouldn't even know where to _start_ with it, if I cared about setting you straight from all your delusions. But I guess we're both lucky, Mousse. I'm not taking on such a crazy big challenge," Ranma said, his eyes narrowing. "I'm only going to break through one of your blind spots today."

"Leave me alone, Saotome! I already said, I concede the damn fight!"

"So who's still attacking? I'm just talking now. It's not my fault that hearing this is going to hurt you worse than punches or kicks." Realizing that he was circling around the point when he should at least be getting closer to it, Ranma continued, "You can say what you like about me, kid yourself all you want about how evil and horrible and wrong for Shampoo I am. You'd be wrong, but I don't really care about that." _'For now, anyway.'_ "But it's years and _years_ past the point where you needed to see that you're no better!"

"How the hell can you say that!"

"How the hell can I not? The old ghoul said you've been chasing after Shampoo since you were _three years old!_ Out of all that time, how many times has she told you she doesn't love you, doesn't want you, and damn well isn't going to change her mind?"

"What if she does say stuff like that? Actions speak louder than words, Saotome! And Shampoo has showed that she does at least care about me. I just need a little more time, to prove to her how good I truly am, and she'll be able to show it for real!"

"Listen to yourself, for crying out loud! Since when does _Shampoo,_ of all people, not show what she really feels? How can you know her so long and keep lying to yourself like this? We're talking about the same girl who fell for me so hard and so fast that after less than a week she couldn't manage to hurt me, even when she thought I really was the girl who'd shamed her!" Ranma spoke the words louder and louder, overriding Mousse's protests and cries for silence. He already knew Duck Boy didn't want to hear this, and that was just too freakin' bad. "And if that's not enough, then bite the damn bullet and remember Mao Moulin. Only a kiss from the guy she loved would save her, and you just about gave it your all to keep that from happening!"

"SHUT UP!" Mousse screamed, finding somewhere the strength to pull off a quick 'barrel roll and thrown blade' combo.

"NOT THIS TIME!" Ranma roared back, knocking the knife aside with the Wind Strike. "She loves me, Mousse! Me, and not you! And right now I don't give a crap how painful that is for you to admit! You're going to do it right here and now. As Kami-Sama is my witness I'll keep you up here as long as it takes!" He called forth another Wind Strike, this one much less punishing than the blasts that had buffeted Mousse, but just as relentless in carrying him along. The wind bore the both of them higher and higher, Ranma ignoring Mousse's curses and demands to be let go.

He stopped just before the point where the air became noticeably thin. The flight up had given him time to reign in his temper, even as Mousse's anger and desperation had risen higher and higher. "It's time to let this go, man," Ranma said coldly. "I'm not even telling you anything you don't already know. I haven't forgotten that one time when first you said you were going back to China to get on with your life, and later you said you were going to make sure I made Shampoo happy. That was all fine and noble-sounding, but your first priority all through that time was to look for something, _anything_ that would hint she might wish you hadn't left. You never found anything, did you?"

"What the hell would you know about any of that!" Mousse demanded. "Who told you? The shriveled old hag who'd rather _die_ than let Shampoo make her own future?"

"And out comes that excuse again. 'She doesn't _really_ want you, you jerk, it's all her mean old grandmother!'" Ranma sighed. "Tell you what, Mousse. Let's make a bet. If I can give you one example of Shampoo loving me and wanting me when it absolutely wasn't Cologne pushing her into it, you finally put this bull behind you and admit the truth. Deep down inside I know you know it already."

"And what happens when you can't do that?" Mousse countered, squelching the little voice that told him to just say no, don't listen, don't give the other boy any kind of opening to work with.

"Since it's not going to happen, I don't much care. Heck, I'm willing to say I'd fly back down there and tell everyone you won the fight." Ranma snorted. "Might as well have a big fat lie for my forfeit, to balance out how yours is to finally face the truth."

"You're on!" Mousse shouted with all the lungpower he had left, trying by sheer force of volume to drown out the voice from before. It was louder now, practically screaming at him to disengage, to pull into a dive, to get out of Ranma's sight before the scum could summon another wind and yank him back like a chained dog.

"Good." Ranma paused for emphasis, then said, "You _already_ lost, Mousse. I brought it up before. Remember when she first came here? No great-grandmother to throw her weight around then. Nobody else to tell her what to do. No-one but Shampoo herself and what she honestly felt, when I lied to her and told her I was really a girl, really the girl who'd dishonored her. By your own laws, the ones you keep bitching about Cologne enforcing, she had a nice clear path then. She should've brought down the full force of Amazon vengeance on my pretty little red head.

"And what did she do? She didn't kill me. She didn't tie me up and drag me back. She didn't say one word about slavery, or conscription, or judgment, or anything. Just looked at me with her eyes full of tears, and ran for it. My damned lie and her feelings for me stuck her with a curse she never, ever deserved, and after all that you go and pretend she doesn't really love me? Do you even respect her at all?"

"Who told you?" Mousse's pained whisper cut through Ranma's building tirade before it could really take off. "You shouldn't have known anything about slavery, or judgment calls, or, or any of that. Who told you what the law really says?"

"Who do you think?" Ranma asked. "Shampoo, of course. You think she might want me to know I wouldn't _really_ have to raise my kids to be killers if I went with her?" He snorted. "Oh, wait, I forgot. It's always got to be Cologne making those calls."

"No," Mousse answered, so quietly that even with Jusenkyo's translation effect Ranma barely caught it. "The mummy wouldn't have done that. Wouldn't have ignored that law. She would have just told you that you could avoid the issue by keeping Shampoo with you in Japan and letting your kids decide on their own whether they want to join the tribe."

"Well, hot damn. Somehow, some way I managed to get through to you? At least a little?"

Moving as slowly as if the gesture took all his remaining strength, Mousse craned his neck around to meet Ranma's gaze. If the Jusenkyo translation effect extended into the visible realm, Ranma would have lost the last of his anger from sensing the misery in his rival's eyes. Instead, it was Mousse's voice that did that. "Why is it so hard to believe? You hit me over and over and over again. Anything will break if you pound it long and hard enough. And of course," he let out the bitterest laugh Ranma could ever remember hearing, "Ranma Saotome doesn't lose."

Ranma steeled his soul against the accusation. "Yeah, that's my rule. And I see you haven't forgotten everyone else's either: it's always Ranma's fault."

"Without you I'd at least have a chance," Mousse replied, though the words were cold and choked with grief, not anger.

"No. You wouldn't," Ranma said, pressing the point home despite his natural tendencies toward mercy. Cologne had told him that she'd tried that tactic for a very long time, and it had just given Mousse room to keep on deceiving himself. "Thirteen years, man. I wasn't there to stand in your way. If you were going to be with her, it would've happened before I ever came into her life. It didn't. It's not going to. And you've got no room to blame me for any of it."

"Fine. If you don't mind, I'll go someplace where you and Sh- Shampoo don't have to put up with my horrible, loathsome, worthless presence." And with that, Mousse folded his wings and twisted into a vertical dive, passing well outside of Wind Strike range before his rival could recover.

"SHIT!" Ranma squawked once he forced his way past the disbelief, entering into his own dive. Was Mousse really that far gone? Were his delusions so important to him that he'd rather die than live without them? Damn it all, if the Amazon really had been balanced on such a knife's edge, Cologne should have sensed it and warned him! Not given him extra material to use in finally smashing those illusions to dust!

He pushed those thoughts from his mind. He couldn't let Mousse end it all. Not now, not like this. Unfortunately, the other falcon had gained far too much of a head start for Ranma to catch up, at least by conventional means. Mousse was already vanishing into the clouds, with his wings still folded and sinking like the proverbial stone, as Ranma braced himself and invoked another Jet Stream.

This time, gravity was working for him, and his dive had already given him a fair bit of speed. Ranma shot down through the clouds as quickly as a cannonball, disengaging the technique the instant he saw green beneath him. He'd begun and ended the move so quickly that he didn't feel the effects until afterward. But when he did, it was all he could do to keep his focus on Mousse. The pain now was even worse than he'd felt after that first bomb blast, and only the fact that he'd braced himself for this pummeling allowed him to weather it better.

Worse, he could feel his reserves beginning to get dangerously low. Cologne had warned him just what overuse of these techniques could do, if he failed to respect his own limits. Both Jet Streams had been needed at the time, but they'd burned energy as greedily as one of those ugly oversized American cars. He couldn't pull off another of those without risking his life, and even the standard Wind Strike would be pushing his luck.

However, there wasn't much choice. And as far as luck went, at least his had been good enough that this Jet Stream had caught him almost completely up with Mousse. Ranma spared one last second to recover from the previous energy expenditure and to confirm that Mousse was still diving straight for the ground. Then, with grim determination he launched a one-two Wind Strike combination. The first smacked into Mousse from the side, breaking his flight out of absolute verticality and surprising him enough that he instinctively spread his wings. The second wind caught him under those wings, completing the task of pulling him into a level glide and out of his rendezvous with the reaper.

"Damn you, Ranma! Can't you just leave me alone?" Mousse yelled, not even bothering to look around for his foe.

"Shut the hell up!" Ranma screamed back, trying to stoke his righteous anger high enough to overcome the bone-deep weariness spreading through his body. "I can't believe you! Just because Shampoo really doesn't love you, that makes everything else in the world worth nothing? That makes your whole life horrible, loathsome, or worthless? Where the hell do you think you get off, pulling something like this?"

"Pulling something like _what?_" Now Mousse did crane his head around, so that he could at least have the satisfaction of glaring at his enemy. "For your information, I was _trying_ to get away from you as fast as I could, so you couldn't just grab me with another damn blast and yank me around any more!"

"O- Oh yeah?" Ranma shot back, reminding himself that he couldn't afford to let Mousse trick him now. He didn't think he had another two Wind Strikes of that power level in him. "Then what was up with saying all that stuff I quoted about yourself?"

"A little thing I like to call _sarcasm_," Mousse said, utilizing the quality in question. "Guess even the great Ranma Saotome doesn't manage to see everything the way it really is."

"Never claimed I did," Ranma shot back. "For example, in the back of my mind I was thinking you'd be glad, even just a little, to know I'd push myself that hard to save your stupid neck."

"Get real. I'm supposed to be grateful? It's just one more example of you not stopping until you've handed absolute, crushing defeat to whoever you're fighting. And let's not forget what it said about what you thought of me," Mousse said, anger finally managing to rise past bitterness as his dominant emotion. "You think I'd shame my family like that? Break the hearts of the people who do love me, because there was one person who didn't? If you really do think I'm that pathetic and cowardly, then maybe the next time we fight it won't be about Shampoo at all!"

"That'll make a nice switch," Ranma muttered, not intending it to sound like he was agreeing with both halves of Mousse's sentence. But as good as the Jusenkyo translation effect was, it still couldn't fully prevent Saotome Foot-in-Mouth Syndrome.

"You'll choke on those words some day," Mousse spat. "But now, can I pretty, pretty please fly away somewhere I won't have to look at you anymore?"

"Yeah, fine, whatever. I'm not stopping you. Haven't been since you said you weren't trying to end it all." Ranma paused, wondering if there was anything else to say. His adversary probably ought to hear the honest concern that Cologne had for him, the hope she held that he could finally win free of the chains he'd borne for so long. But he didn't know whether he was the right person to tell Mousse that, and he really doubted that this was the right time.

In any case, the question was rendered academic. Mousse twisted and dove again, flying directly away from the clearing where they'd met for the battle. Musing that it was a good thing he hadn't been trying to win Mousse's admiration or friendship, Ranma turned and sailed back to the three people waiting for him, moving at a slow glide to avoid stressing his battered body any further.

-----------------------

She was the second of three to lower her pair of binoculars. She stayed perfectly still, even holding her breath, as he winged his way into the clearing. She remained motionless as a statue as he landed next to his hot water carafe.

Not until Ranma transformed, without bothering to signal for privacy, did Shampoo bolt forward and wrap her arms around him.

Even then she was careful not to squeeze too hard, nor turn the embrace into an offer of anything other than comfort. "Ai, Airen," she choked. "Is you okay? Really okay?"

"Yeah," he said, his voice so tired and weary that Shampoo wasn't as reassured as she might have been. "You know I ain't gonna let a jerk like Mousse finish me off."

"He, he come too-too close, it look like. Shampoo think heart stop when bombs blow up and Ranma go down." The Amazon took a deep breath, trying to regain more control. "Was all I could do not to go up into sky and deal with him own self."

"Thanks for not doing that," Ranma said, managing to say it without even a hint of sarcasm. After all, he'd been glad enough for her intervention in the battle with the deadly minstrel Mon Lon of the Seven Lucky Gods. "Thanks for leaving it up to me. Shampoo... I think I finally managed to get through to him. To get him to see you ain't gonna dump me for him, or go to him even if I wasn't in the picture."

She pulled back, just enough to stare directly into his eyes. "That why you do it like this? Why you change him from duck to falcon, why you not just use Wind Strike to win fight right away? So you could talk?"

"Uh, yeah. Cologne didn't tell you I was gonna do that?" he said with a frown. He'd been kind of happy to think that Shampoo would be cheering his efforts on, counting on him to achieve every aspect of victory—for her sake as well as his and Mousse's.

"No. All she say was, it would not be good idea for Shampoo to talk to Mousse, find out what trick he have plan, then warn you ahead of time."

Ranma's frown deepened. He wasn't sure he agreed at all with that assessment. He half-turned away from Shampoo, sending his glare toward the Matriarch.

Then he blinked. Cologne was staring back at him with a small, inscrutable smile. Her staff was extended up at a forty-five degree angle, with the widest bulges of the knobby end almost brushing against the front of his father's gi. The sight of a tiny, shriveled old lady trying to bar the way of a man as big and burly as Genma might have been humorous under other circumstances, but that thought didn't even cross Ranma's mind. _'I can't believe I forgot Pop was here, even as tired as I am and as quiet as he's being. And why's the old man looking so upset anyway? This is actually pretty mild for Shampoo.'_ Her hands were still on his shoulders, but that was the only point of contact between them just then. _'Geez, if I hadn't already known which parent I inherited my hang-ups with getting close to girls from, I guess this would give me the answer. Wonder what he'd do if I actually kissed her right here and now.'_

He gave serious thought to this for a moment, or as much serious thought as he could manage while riding the edge of exhaustion and doing his best to hide that fact. The effort of keeping so many things secret was beginning to wear on him. It might be nice to get some of it out into the open with his father. Genma would undoubtedly find ways to give him grief, but he'd only be able to do so when Nodoka wasn't around to catch him at it. The old man wouldn't dare throw too much of his weight around.

Ranma sighed, deciding that while the idea had some merit, it was probably too much too soon. He and Shampoo needed to have a serious talk, and maybe that ought to happen before any kissing. And he certainly didn't want to give his father a heart attack.

"Um... Ranma..." Shampoo said, hesitantly and oh so very reluctantly, "you should probably put on clothes again, before you father blow out aorta or something."

It took her words a moment to sink in. When they did, his system coughed up its last dreg of adrenaline. Ranma darted away and dressed with what was quite remarkable speed, under the circumstances.

"About time, Boy," Genma growled, ignoring the staff that still stretched in front of him.

"Back at ya, Pop," Ranma said, watching as Cologne withdrew her cane and wishing she'd offer it to him to lean on. "In fact, I'm still waiting on you. I just won the hardest battle I've had in months. Think you can spare a couple words to tell me you're glad I did?"

He'd really just meant it as typical verbal sparring of the kind he and Genma indulged in so often, and was quite surprised at the impact his words actually had. Genma flinched back, and the dark glower that he'd worn softened into something else. Ranma wasn't sure was it was, exactly... but somehow, seeing it made him feel a lot better inside.

He didn't have long to examine the expression, though, as his father sighed and hung his head. "Yes, Ranma. I am glad," the man said quietly. He was silent for a few moments. When he looked up, his face was mostly controlled again. "You shouldn't have come out of it this weak and weary, though," Genma pronounced. "Look at you! You're almost ready to fall on your face." He heaved an exaggerated sigh. "It's a good thing for you your wise and experienced father is here, to pick up your slack and give you a shoulder to lean on." And with that, Genma walked over and held out his hand.

If he'd expected Ranma to take it automatically, he was doomed to disappointment. Instead, his son stared into his eyes for a long, long moment. He received the distinct impression that Ranma was looking for something, piercing barriers that Genma wasn't sure he wanted pierced. Part of him urged the rest to look away, take the two more steps that would bring him close enough, and sling an arm around Ranma with or without the boy's cooperation.

He never was quite sure why he fought the impulse down.

The moment stretched, and stretched... and then Ranma gave a tiny nod, and grasped Genma's hand. Almost immediately he clarified, "I ain't saying anything about _needing_ this, Pop. But if you're offering, then I guess I'll accept. Thanks."

"Anytime, Son," Genma murmured as he took the brunt of Ranma's weight and began leading the way back toward civilization. Behind him he heard Shampoo and Cologne following a few paces behind. Hardly an optimal state of affairs in his opinion, but at least they weren't trying to push forward or intrude. And so, with some effort, Genma focused only on his son, pushing the Amazons out of mind for now.

He feared he'd indulged in that luxury too long already. But that was a thought for another day, when Ranma was strong enough to stand on his own two feet.

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Author's notes

Not so much to say in the notes here, except that this chapter got so long that I had to yank several plot points from it. They will now form a side-story which will be the next thing I release.

One original series reference I've seen made dozens and dozens of times in fics is to a quote from Kasumi, referring to Akane: "She's a very sweet girl; she's just a violet maniac." This must be from either the manga or perhaps the original Japanese, because the anime quote is "She's a very sweet girl, just a little high-spirited." I bring this up here because this is the quote Ranma was thinking about, back at the beginning of this chapter.

Speaking of other fanfics, much of the values expressed by Ukyo in this chapter were influenced by her characterisation in Eric Hallstrom's fic 'Family Values' (an excellent short piece). The Air style ability mentioned by Shampoo to clamp down on the air with your own aura and prevent your opponent from being able to breathe is inspired by Cologne's 'Gentle Stilling Breath' technique in Judah's fanfic 'Right Moments'.

Nothing much else to say, except that it truly is just a coincidence, when the gust of wind blows Genma off the train. Life is like that, in Nerima. Thanks to Nemesis Zero, Beege, and Edward for C&C.


	10. Three Sheets to the Wind

Dream of the Earthbound

A Ranma ½ fanfic by Aondehafka

Disclaimer: the Ranmaverse characters owned by Rumiko Takahashi, and all that obligatory stuff. This story based on the anime, not the manga.

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Side Story: Three Sheets to the Wind

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Late morning sunlight gleamed down on the two Saotome men as they walked through the streets of Nerima. From the looks on their faces, a casual observer would have characterized both of them as 'thoughtful'—though if said observer was familiar with the tenets of Anything Goes, he might have added that this was just his best guess.

The hypothetical spectator would have been correct. Both Ranma and Genma had plenty on their minds as they walked along. As they came within sight of their destination, Ranma suddenly gave a nod and stopped.

"Don't think I'm not grateful for yesterday, Pop," he said slowly. "Because I am."

"Huh?" Genma said, halting as well. "Where'd that come from, all of a sudden?"

Ranma shrugged. "Heck, I probably should've said it yesterday. I hadn't thought up a good excuse for why I was so tired, and it wouldn't have been good idea to have Akane see that and find out about the fight with Mousse. You fixed that though, leavin' me at Tofu's to rest while you put Akane through the Training Session from Hell. I gotta admit, I didn't expect you to go that far, wiping her out enough that nobody other than Mom even noticed me last night."

"Glad to hear you're grateful," Genma grumbled. "That was harder than I ever meant or wanted to push her. And I'm sure you saw those pitiful kicked-puppy looks Soun kept sending my way."

"Until Akane caught him at it and wanted to make sure he wasn't trying to guilt-trip you out of training her as hard as it took." Ranma shook his head, still mildly disoriented at the memory. "...I guess I oughta say thanks for that, too. Her skills still need plenty of work, but for attitude I think you really managed to do it, Pop. You have turned her into a martial artist."

"And now that matters to you?" Genma asked, giving his son a sideways glance.

"Whattaya mean, 'now'? You think I _liked_ busting my butt to rescue Akane from all that junk she should've been able to handle herself? You think I liked worrying somethin' would happen to her when I wasn't around to save the day? It never once felt good to hear her say 'I'm a martial artist too!' and know she honestly thought that's how it was. But if she says it now I can just grin, slap her on the back, an' say 'Congratulations!' You oughta know that would count as good news to me, Pop. Why'd you even ask?"

"Why don't we save that until we're inside and sitting down." Genma turned to face the building in front of them and took a few steps closer. When he didn't hear Ranma move to follow, he stopped and turned back again. "What's the hold-up, Boy?"

"Like I was _saying_, before someone got me all side-tracked..." Ranma cleared his throat, his gaze tracking up and away from Genma to examine the building. From the outside, at least, the bar seemed like a pretty high-quality place. "I'm grateful, Pop. But that only goes so far, and letting you get me into a drinking contest ain't gonna happen."

Genma blinked. "A drinking contest? Why would I want to do that?"

"Probably so once I was smashed and you were just mellow you could challenge me to spar," Ranma shot back.

The elder Saotome didn't wince, but it was a near thing. Only the fact that he hadn't been planning that specifically for today let him keep his face straight. "You wound me, Ranma," he said solemnly. "As if your own father would stoop to such tricks."

Ranma snorted. "The heck you wouldn't. You know, I heard most of that stuff you told Mom today, to get her all happy about the idea of us sneaking off for a father-son celebration."

"I knew you were listening in," Genma replied. "I figured if you had a problem with it, you'd stick your head in and derail the whole thing."

"Like how? Mom was already kinda happy about the idea by the time I figured out what you were saying, and that meant it was too late for me to do anything. And all the rest of that stuff you fed her just made her happier." Happy enough that she wound up pressing a huge wad of yen onto Genma to pay for the celebration.

"Bah, if that's what you think then you need to spend more time around your mother," Genma declared. "You think it was too late that early? Just because I'd gotten her happy at the idea and thinking it would be a manly thing, for us to celebrate you beating Mousse? If you didn't want to come here with me you should have made your own suggestion to Nodoka, convinced her your idea would be an even manlier way to celebrate your win. That would have gotten you out of this easily."

The younger Saotome frowned. It wasn't like his father to actually give Ranma advice on how to defeat him. Other people, yes, but not Genma himself... yet now that the old man had pointed this possibility out, he couldn't find a flaw in it. "And you're telling me this why?"

"To help you know how to deal with your mother, of course," Genma said. He looked away. "After all, you're saying you didn't want to come here today, but you did it for her sake."

After a long moment of silence, Ranma spoke. Choosing his words carefully, he said, "I'm not sure I'd go that far, Pop. All I was trying to say is, you're not gonna get me flying three sheets to the wind." He smirked and continued, "On the other hand, I might not mind dragging your pickled panda butt back home."

Genma shrugged. "That'd probably make her even prouder, if she thought you drank me under the table. Just make sure you have one cup of sake before you leave, so Nodoka can smell it on you. You can stick with Long Island Iced Tea until then," he added, still looking away and keeping his voice as casual as possible.

"Good. Just so we're clear on this," Ranma said, walking forward and catching up with Genma. The two of them passed through the door and into the bar.

Once inside the pigtailed teen paused, taking a long look around. Years had passed since the last time Genma took him to a bar. There'd been many such trips when he was younger and Genma was training in Anything Goes Drunken Fu, but he'd finally figured out how to get out of them when he was thirteen. It hadn't taken much whining and declaring that he was _too_ old enough to drink to get barred from any more visits.

Of course, he might not have bothered if the dives they'd frequented back then had been as nice as this one. His first glance gave him that classy 'bigger on the inside than the outside' impression. The public area was one room, outfitted in some dark, sturdy wood. The room itself was rectangular, though walls jutted forth here and there which formed semi-private alcoves. Several large paintings adorned the walls, all of which showed landscapes or cityscapes locked in the grip of winter. Tables dotted the whole of the room, spaced generously far apart and lighted by lamps. No two were exactly alike, Ranma saw as he continued taking in his surroundings. In fact, he could spot styles from all over the world, perhaps not surprising since the bartender was obviously a gaijin.

This was easily the classiest joint Genma had ever dragged him to... so much so that he was beginning to feel a bit guilty. Maybe he shouldn't have assumed the old man was planning to spend just a little of that huge bankroll and pocket the rest.

He returned his attention to Genma, who hadn't stopped when he did. The elder Saotome had made his way across the room to the long bar and engaged the man behind it in conversation. As if to deal the deathblow to his son's old theory, he handed over what looked to Ranma like the whole wad of yen. It wasn't easy to be certain at this distance, of course, but he could at least tell that if Genma had held back anything, it was little more than pocket change.

_'On the other hand, he could be settling an old tab,'_ Ranma reflected as he hurried across to catch up with Genma. "What gives, Pop?" he said as he did so. "Last time I checked, it wasn't normal to pay in advance, especially not _that_ much in advance."

Before Genma could say anything, the barman answered. "Nothing normal about this place, boy," he rumbled, drawing Ranma's gaze back to him. It was a man with at least thirty years, eight inches, and ninety pounds on Genma, with a similar build of burly strength obscured by a protective layer of fat. The man's eyes were brown, his hair a grizzled grey-black, and his nose the reddest Ranma had ever seen. He spoke Japanese with an accent, much less pronounced than Shampoo's but still noticeable, and the Russian flavoring quickly established to Ranma that his guess of the other's nationality had been correct. "This is best bar for martial artists in all Japan, which should mean is best in the whole world. Is matter of honor for you to give money in advance; I will deduct cost of services rendered, and give back the rest when time comes for you to go."

Ranma managed not to take a step backwards from the sheer power of the alcohol fumes wafting to him on the man's breath, but it was a very near thing. "Uh... yeah," he said doubtfully. There had to be something here he wasn't getting; no way would Genma simply let that much yen slip through his fingers. Maybe his father knew that when it came time to settle up, he'd be able to lead the guy into believing he had more yen coming back to him than he really did. Or maybe there was somebody else who kept the process honest and error-free, somebody who wasn't currently pickled to the gills. He didn't spot a likely candidate for this role as Genma led him off to a table in one of the alcoves, though he did see the bartender pop the top on a bottle of brandy and half-empty the thing in one long series of gulps.

"You sure about this, Pop?" he asked as they settled down. "Sure you didn't just kiss all that cash goodbye? He says it's a matter of honor to let him handle it... well, that's all well an' good, but how much honor does it take to balance out being that drunk?"

"Bah. You wouldn't ask such a foolish question if you'd ever been here before, Ranma." Genma blinked. "Come to think of it, I suppose I'm a little relieved at that."

"What, you think I would've been sneaking around behind your back, getting up to things you wouldn't want me to and going places you'd never want me going without you watching my back?" Ranma asked, somehow managing to make it sound like a serious question. Still, he didn't wait for an answer. "So what is it I'm not seeing about this place?"

"Not the place, the person." Genma nodded toward the bartender. "That's Pyotr Kareshev, the Legendary Drunken Master."

"So... what? He's got a high tolerance?" Ranma asked as he watched Pyotr finish off the bottle of brandy. "Okay, great, but how far can that go?"

Genma hesitated for an instant, considering and discarding the impulse to indulge in his more usual theatrics. "Ranma, don't be an idiot," he said briskly. "You ought to realize what it means to call someone a 'Master'. I taught you better than that."

Ranma gave his father a hooded stare. "Maybe _you_ did, but that was before Nerima. Before the Master of Martial Arts Shogi, the Master of Martial Arts Calligraphy, the Master of Martial Arts Topiary, the—"

"Yes, well, my _point_ is that it would be a very bad idea to lump Pyotr in with those losers," Genma said. Three tables away, Shujako, the Master of Martial Arts Topiary, frowned but said nothing. He could recognize at least a few losing prospects when he saw them, and getting drawn into another match with an Anything Goes fighter certainly qualified. "He honed his skills through years of toil and sweat and ever-greater bouts of binge-drinking where he managed to always keep riding the ragged edge of control, until he reached the ultimate level of mastery. Alcohol can't even touch him anymore—no matter how much he drinks, it won't affect his mind or body."

"If it don't affect him, why does he keep knocking back the stuff like that?" Ranma asked as Pyotr drew and drained a huge mug of beer.

"Well, mastery has its price. I said drinking doesn't hurt him; I didn't say anything about _not_ drinking."

"Right," Ranma said, rolling his eyes. "Still waiting to hear how this is better than Martial Arts Shogi, Pop."

"Watch and learn, Boy," Genma said, pointing to the bar. One of the men seated at it had just finished off the last of his drink, and was blearily waving Pyotr over. "Watch and learn."

"Okay," Ranma said, tuning out distractions to focus on the scene. It was difficult without knowing the right Air trick yet, but even across this distance he managed to hear the customer call for another bottle of sake. At least, that was what he thought the man had asked for. He was already so drunk that Ranma might not have been certain even if he'd been standing next to the guy to listen.

Pyotr shook his head. "Last call for you, Ichiro. You are way over the line."

"Awww, c'monn Pyoshr, I dun wanna g'home yet. Be a pal an' shober me up, okay?"

"Is third time today. Sober-up fee has climb to forty thousand yen."

"Thassss okay," slurred the heir to Martial Arts Accounting. "I s- still gotta bouta hundred thousand yen to blow. P- please?"

"...Da."

In the blink of an eye a glow sprang up around Pyotr, then just as quickly vanished. The next instant the formerly-sloshed customer shot to his feet and streaked to the door of the men's room, moving with no trace of stagger or stumble. He reappeared several minutes later, looking very relieved and utterly clear-headed, and resumed his old seat at the bar.

"His mastery lets him wipe out the effects of alcohol on anyone nearby," Genma explained. "That's not very frightening, of course, but the other side of it is awesome indeed, and it's why this place doesn't need a bouncer. Even though Pyotr can't get drunk himself, his body and spirit sense just how wasted he _ought_ to be, and he can project as much of that as he wants into someone who gives him grief." He took off his glasses and polished them for a moment. "Or customers who like getting buzzed but don't care for the taste of alcohol."

"That is awesome," Ranma agreed, eyeing the man with new respect. "He developed this all on his own?"

"That's the story."

"Then if it's not some ancient secret perfected over a thousand years, there's gotta be lots of room for improvement. It'd be even better if it could be fixed to work without a ten-gallon-a-day habit," Ranma mused. "Wonder if I should talk to him about that."

Although he had meant the words at least half-seriously, Ranma was still disconcerted to see Pyotr turn and look straight at him, grin widely, leave the bar, and stride over to their table. "I might be willing to make deal," the man said. "Greta! Marta! Umira!" Ranma's shock was compounded as three very attractive girls appeared, seemingly out of thin air. One was blonde, the other two were brunettes, and all three were buxom enough to give adult Hinako a run for her money. They wore wide, welcoming smiles and black dresses accessorized with aprons and nametags.

"My lovely granddaughters," Pyotr explained, seeing his guest's surprise. "You not notice before? Is okay, to not be noticed by customers who do not want distraction is integral part of the life of Martial Arts Barmaid, just like not bothering customers before they are ready to order. I decide long ago that secrets of Drunken Mastery are to be pass down to family only, but any of my girls would make good wife for some lucky man..."

One corner of Ranma's mind calmly meditated on all the horrible, horrible things he was going to do to Genma for bringing him here. The rest scrambled for a way to get out of this without making things worse. Point out that the girls were all older than him, by what looked like a range of two to five years? No, with his luck it would come out sounding like an insult and he'd wind up dead drunk faster than he could say 'formaldehyde'. Remind Pyotr that he didn't know a thing about the guy he was ready to welcome into the family? No, that was no good either; the bar was right in the middle of Nerima, and that meant Pyotr had to at least have heard of Ranma Saotome. Wait a minute...

"Ah, thank you for honoring me with your offer, but I can't do that to your granddaughters," Ranma said as politely and earnestly as he could. "I couldn't drag such beautiful flowers into my crazy excuse for a life. If you need to know what I'm talking about, I can tell you a few stories." Wasn't that supposed to be one of the big draws of bars anyway, to pour your troubles into a sympathetic ear and thereby get some relief? That would be a heck of a lot better than what was actually happening.

Pyotr's grin widened further. He gave a deep belly laugh, following it up with a slap to Ranma's back. "Ha ha! Not bad, young one. It was only joke, of course. I know by heart all the mad stories of the life of Ranma Saotome. Good fun to listen to, but I would not wish such foolishness and grief on my precious little girls. And I know too that you already have your share of troubles with women; I would not heap more on your tender young head."

_'I liked it better when I just thought he had to have heard of me,'_ Ranma grumbled to himself. He'd always suspected that there were people who viewed his life as a source of entertainment, but he'd thought they were confined to Furinkan. Finding out how right and wrong he'd been wasn't much fun. He wondered whether it might not be better to have a few glasses of sake, rather than something as innocent as iced tea.

"And anyway you do not want to learn this," Pyotr continued. "Happosai would bring down such wrath as you have never seen. He thinks my Mastery is an abomination unto all that is good and right with the world. Maybe he even would kick you out of Anything Goes."

Ranma made a disgusted face. Somehow he could picture it all too clearly, even though the heart of the style was supposed to be taking and refining anything and everything useful that the competition had to offer. "Oh well, forget I said anything. Thanks anyway."

"Yes, thanks for looking out for my boy," Genma added.

Pyotr's smile gained a faintly humorous quality, which Ranma completely missed. "Da," he said, inclining his head and retreating back to the bar.

Marta and Umira faded away from view as well, but Greta remained in place. "Are you ready to order?" she asked with only a hint of an accent, and a friendly but utterly non-flirtatious smile.

"A bottle of hot sake for me," Genma replied. "Your grandfather knows my brand."

"Do you serve... uh, what was it, Long Island Iced Tea?" Ranma asked. Hopefully Genma hadn't been joking and they really did have non-alcoholic drinks here.

"Yes, we do. Shall I start you off with a glass or a pitcher?"

"A glass," Ranma answered. As the girl smiled, nodded, and walked away he concentrated on watching the delivery process. Sure enough—not only did Greta not fade from visibility, he could also see her sisters as they made their rounds.

"I know she's pretty, Boy, but you might not want to stare like that," Genma rumbled.

"I wasn't—!" Ranma bit down on the reflexive protest. "You know what? I'm gonna have to ask why not. She _is_ pretty, and she ain't about to jump me with the least little bit of encouragement, and there's none of the usual gang around to take it the wrong way. Why the heck _should_ I be scared to even notice she looked good?"

Genma backpedaled, realizing he'd made a tactical error. He wasn't ready to start the serious discussion just yet... or rather, Ranma wasn't ready. "I just thought it might not be a good habit to get into," he placated.

"Hmm. Guess I can't argue with that," his son allowed, settling his ruffled feathers.

Greta was already on her way back from the bar, so neither Saotome said anything more as she crossed the remaining distance, set down their drinks, and headed off again. Ranma picked up his glass and gave it a speculative look. American-style iced tea was something he hadn't had in a long time; he'd come to enjoy it when he and Genma visited Texas on their training journey, but it was still pretty hard to think of as 'tea'.

He took a gulp. Not bad, he decided, even though it wasn't much like the varieties he'd encountered before. But leaving familiar stuff behind to experience new things was itself pretty familiar by now.

He took another, longer drink, then turned his attention back to Genma. The elder Saotome was taking it slow, savoring what Ranma guessed was better sake than his old man was used to. "This seems like a pretty nice place, Pop," he said, after another swallow that left his glass half empty. "You come here a lot?"

"I'm afraid not," Genma said. "It's way too expensive to come as much as I'd like. Not only is it the classiest tavern in town, the Master never comes here." The elder Saotome gave a wry grin. "I think it disturbs him to look at Pyotr and remember what can happen if you drink too much."

Ranma shook his head. "Geez, that's sad. Actually bein' scared of not being able to get wasted anymore... if that's what alcohol will do for you, I'm in no hurry to try it." He took another long drink from his glass. "Maybe I could just spill a little sake on my shirt before we leave."

"Maybe," Genma said with a faint smile. _'Or you could chug a whole bottleful of this stuff. It smells and tastes the same, without any of that pesky alcohol to dull your wits while you're talking to your only son.'_

A few moments passed in silence as Genma sipped another cupful of sake and Ranma finished his drink. This time it was Marta who popped up beside the table, collecting his glass and confirming that he was ready for a refill.

"So this is the kind of service we get from bein' waited on by Martial Arts Barmaids," Ranma mused a few minutes later. Genma was still on his first bottle of sake, but one of the girls had stopped by anyway, not to ask him if he wanted another drink but to reheat his current one with a quick burst of hot chi. Since then Ranma had been watching the girls as they circulated through the room, keeping every customer that wasn't seated at the long bar in perfect comfort. It was a pleasant sight, and although he wasn't remotely regretting that Pyotr's offer had just been a joke, watching it was still making him feel very mellow.

"Kinda makes ya wish more of the kooky styles in this town focused on something like that," he continued. Ranma gestured expansively with his glass, three-quarters empty and fading fast. "Martial Arts Tea Ceremony? Feh. I'd trade that for something like Martial Arts Baking in a heartbeat."

"Actually there is a school of Martial Arts Baking," Genma said, deciding he'd better head this off at the pass. "And you better not throw around comments like that in a bar full of martial artists. The heir to the school is only six years older than you, but she's large enough to make two of Pyotr. You might not like what happens if word gets back to her that the hotshot Ranma Saotome was speaking so highly of her family school."

"Got it," Ranma said, nodding agreeably. At another time he might have been irritated at the reminder of the kind of deals Genma had pulled in the past, but now it was just nice to see the old man had learned his lesson. Not only that, but Genma was even helping him keep from making similar mistakes. "Hey, how'd you know all that anyway?"

Genma fought off a full-body shudder. "I'd need to drink a lot more than this before I told that story, Boy," he said before chugging the rest of his bottle.

"So go ahead an' get another. Heck, we both need a refill." Ranma tossed back the final swallows in his glass. This time the nearest barmaid didn't even bother to ask; she just turned up at their table with a smile and a loaded tray. "They just keep getting better and better," Ranma said approvingly after she'd ghosted away. "Hey, Pop, you dropped off all our cash at the front, but what about tips an' stuff like that?"

"You're not supposed to tip them. It's part of the charm of the place, that you get high-quality service without having to pay extra for it." Genma was silent for a moment, wondering whether he ought to be glad or worried that these girls had Ranma showing such approval. On one hand, they weren't Tendos, which was a bad thing... but on the other, this could mean he'd been more worried than necessary over the matter of Shampoo. He hoped that was the case, since it didn't look like Mousse was going to be able to run much interference after all.

"Huh. Still, it'd be nice to say thanks somehow. Ain't every day that I dodge that kind of bullet," Ranma remarked. "Already got all the fiancées I want, that's for sure. Seein' something like this happen... it makes me feel better, like I might be getting closer to solving that problem for real." He pondered a minute. "Maybe the next time some jerk blows into town to challenge me, I could point him to this place after I kick the crud out of him."

"Hmmm," Genma said, hiding a grimace by draining his cup. "Can't say I've noticed you working toward anything like that, Ranma."

Ranma grinned cheekily back at him. "You ain't the best in the world at noticin' stuff, Old Man."

"I might be better than you think," Genma warned. He was about to speak further about this, but Ranma didn't give him the chance.

"Hah!" Ranma looked away from his father, turning his gaze toward a guy in his mid-twenties on the far side of the room. The young man in question had been trying to keep himself inconspicuous ever since the Saotomes arrived—not the easiest task, considering the large travel sack beside him, stuffed to overflowing with rolls and bundles of various sizes and types of paper. "Yo, Takeru!" he called.

Very, very reluctantly, Takeru looked round. "Yes, Ranma? What is it?"

"Mind if I bum a few sheets of paper off ya?" He paused, distracted momentarily. _'Am I really borrowing it, though?'_ After all, as soon as Takeru agreed Ranma would be repaying him with a glimpse of something he'd never seen before, something that could inspire the guy to reach for new heights of the Art. Come to think of it, Takeru might already have done that since their last encounter; he could have a few new tricks of his own to share. Ranma grinned, and said, "We could fight another rematch over it if ya want."

The heir to Martial Arts Origami shook his head vehemently. "That won't be necessary; one was quite enough for me. Take what you like." His eyes only widened slightly when a sudden wind ripped three sheets loose from his highest-quality pad and floated them over to the Saotomes' table. Takeru nodded to Ranma's call of thanks, carefully returned his attention to his drink, and hoped the overpowered freak of nature wouldn't take any further notice of him.

Meanwhile, Genma's eyes had widened drastically. "How exactly did you do that, Ranma?"

"Wouldn't you like to know," Ranma said cheerfully. He squelched the little voice whispering from the back of his mind that actually Genma probably wouldn't. He was tired of keeping all this stuff a secret, and if the price of giving himself more peace of mind was stealing that peace from his father, well, that was perfectly in line with the principles of Anything Goes.

It had been a while since he'd used Martial Arts Origami, but the skills were still right there within easy reach. He barely glanced at the paper as he folded it into an elaborate, perfectly-proportioned falcon. He'd captured it in the very moment of leaving the earth behind—wings spread wide, one foot still just touching the ground while the other retracted toward the tucked-in-for-flight position. Once finished, he picked the bird up and flicked his wrist, sending it winging through the air to land perched on the very edge of an empty sake bottle Umira had just picked up. _'Take that, no tipping policy!'_

"You're saying you learned this from the time you spent in your cursed form?" Genma tried, hoping against hope that this was all there was to it.

"Nope! Spending time as a falcon does make the Air style easier to learn," Ranma said. "An' it means I can fight for real like that, without havin' to claw someone all to pieces. But the style was made by humans, for humans." He picked up the second sheet of paper in one hand and stretched his other out flat over the table, engaging the Buzzing Fist at the greatest power level he could manage. He dropped the paper into the rippling air, and both Saotomes watched as it was reduced to confetti. "Couldn't do something like _that_ in my falcon form," he commented.

Genma said nothing in reply. A whimsical desire to stretch the drama of the moment led Ranma to turn back to his drink. Besides, he didn't want to neglect it too long. The ice would melt and water down the enjoyment factor.

His father still hadn't said anything by the time he'd satisfied his immediate thirst, a fact which was beginning to get a little puzzling. "Whatsa matter, Pop? Too impressed to say anything?"

"Hardly," Genma growled. "I'm just waiting for you to show me whatever else you had in mind."

"Huh?" Ranma blinked. "How'd you figure I had something else?"

"You pulled _three_ sheets over here," his father pointed out.

"Right. Heh, keep that up and maybe I won't be able to say you suck at noticin' stuff after all," Ranma quipped. Now that he knew Genma was deliberately waiting on him, he turned back to his drink for a few dramatic swallows more.

"Go ahead, Son. Take your time," Genma said, his tone gentle but still patronizing if one were listening at all closely.

_'Aw, man, it's no fun if he's not getting impatient or nothing,'_ Ranma thought. "Actually, Pop, this last one was more for me than you." He gave his father one last smirk, then turned all his focus onto the paper before him and the air surrounding it. Slowly the sheet rose from the table, then began to fold and crease in response to the invisible forces washing over it. Ranma found it even harder than he'd expected to use the skills of Martial Arts Origami via the Wind Strike, but he stuck it out, pushing against the challenge and his own limitations.

Genma stared, his mouth drawing into an ever-tighter, ever-grimmer line as the paper twisted and turned, its final form becoming clearer and clearer. By the time his son was finished, both Saotomes' expressions metaphorically mirrored each other—in the way a mirror image reverses what it's showing. Ranma wore a soft smile as he stared at the proud, curvy, graceful figure clearly recognizable as Shampoo. Genma's own gaze was cold and fearful.

He managed to get his face and voice under control, or at least enough control that Ranma in his current condition wouldn't notice anything wrong. "Why did you say this was for you, not me?"

"Cause I'd already showed ya the Wind Strike," Ranma explained. "This was a challenge for me, to see if I was good enough with it to pull off something like this."

The elder Saotome fought off an urge to grab the figure and drop it on the tray of a passing barmaid. "I was more impressed by the other move. At least this one makes a decent parlor trick, I suppose."

Ranma rolled his eyes. "Just when I start developin' a little respect for you, ya have to open your mouth and blow it," he exaggerated. He shook his head. "For your information, Pop, this move halfway made the difference between life an' death in my fight with Mousse."

"Halfway?" Genma queried, reminding himself that he needed to keep the conversation light and seemingly-harmless. Ranma was a lot more open now, thanks to the alcohol he hadn't even realized he was drinking, but that didn't magically turn his son into a combination of open book and doormat. He couldn't afford to project any negative emotions. "What exactly do you mean?"

"Well, don't pass this on to Shampoo or nothin', but I kinda screwed up," Ranma said conspiratorially. "I coulda smashed Mousse in no time flat with this stuff. Knowing that made me a little overconfident. If I'd gone into that battle without the Air style to back me up, I woulda fought it totally different, an' maybe not got hurt at all." He frowned. "On the other hand, that woulda needed me to come down on him hard an' fast, not taking any time to talk to him about what was what. He'd prob'ly still be chasin' after Shampoo and kidding himself he had a chance with her. Even with the beating I took from those stupid bombs, this way was better. At least, if it finishes off that crap."

This time Genma couldn't hide his grimace. Fortunately, at least from one point of view, Ranma chose that moment to look down at his origami masterpiece and thus didn't see him. Genma decided that for now it was probably a good idea to shelve the topic of the Amazons (and regardless of whether it was a good idea, he really, _really_ wanted to do it). "Getting back to something you said earlier..."

"Huh?" Ranma said, not paying much attention. He was more interested just then in a different question: did he want his next refill to be another individual glass, or should he just have them leave a pitcher? If it was the pitcher, he'd get a chance to find out whether the girls could project cold chi as well as hot to refresh customers' drinks. If they could, maybe he could send them off to Cologne to learn the Hiryu Shoten Ha or something. That sounded like a good plan—get extra credit from the Kareshevs _and_ the Amazons, for introducing them to each other.

_'Then again, if they really hit it off and Pyotr decides to relocate to the Amazon village...'_ Ranma took a good, long look around the bar full of martial artists and imagined them all learning whose fault it was that they'd lost this place for good. Suddenly listening to whatever his father was saying sounded like a much better idea.

"Are you ready to listen now, Ranma?" Genma said dryly.

Ranma nodded. "Yeah, that's prob'ly better than getting every customer here howling for my blood."

"Uh... undoubtedly," his father answered, hoping that had just been alcohol-induced randomness. "Anyway, I wanted to get back to what you were saying earlier, about Akane."

"What, you want to hear me say it again? Eh, why not," Ranma said amiably. "As far as I can tell you're doing a great job with her, Pop. I never would've thought you could take her so far so quickly. I appreciate it." He shook his head. "Wish Mr. Tendo could say the same thing. But I guess if he could, Akane wouldn't have had so far to go in the first place."

"I... I am glad to hear you say that, Ranma," Genma said carefully. "But I'm a little confused, too."

Ranma blinked. "What's there to be confused about?"

"Well, if you want to see her get better, why didn't you go along with your part of my plan?" Genma asked. "You know the training I'm giving Akane doesn't focus much on her basic skills. I'm dealing with other areas because that's the way I can help her best." He paused to give Ranma as authoritative a stare as he could manage. "I wanted _you_ to be the one working with her for the basics."

Ranma shrugged and looked away. "I tried. Didn't go over any better than it ever did, the times I tried that in the past. Or at least, not better enough."

"What do you mean, not better enough? Your fiancée needs your help, Boy! Don't you think it's about time you tried a little harder to give it to her?"

"No, I don't!" Ranma snapped back, still not meeting Genma's gaze. "An' I'd rather talk about something else, if you don't mind!"

Genma took a few deep breaths, reminding himself once again that this conversation had to be kept light and open. Still, he needed to know why the boy wasn't even a little willing to give Akane the help he said he wanted her to get.

He took a long drink of sake, using it as a shield while he covertly studied Ranma. The boy was frowning moodily into his glass, which wasn't so good. Still, for the moment he wasn't paying any attention to Genma, and that at least was what his father needed. Genma casually set his cup down and refilled it, while his free hand dangled down out of Ranma's line of sight. He shot one significant glance toward the long bar, making sure that Pyotr was watching, then tossed down the new shot of sake while making a quick bunch of signals.

-----------------------

Marta frowned thoughtfully and crossed the distance to the bar. It was supposed to be the barmaids' job to take care of customers seated at the tables, but that certainly hadn't looked like a signal to any of them. "Grandpapa, was that customer asking you for something that he should be getting from us?"

Pyotr smiled. "No, Marta. Genma Saotome needs to have a serious talk with his son, so he brought him to bar to loosen his tongue with the spirits, and he brought him to this bar so that I would keep him from get more than just a little over the edge." He chuckled. "I do not think the boy even knows his drink has alcohol in it. It took barely half his first glass to get him to where Genma wants him. Or wanted him, at least; he just signal to me to let the boy go a little further."

Marta's eyes widened then narrowed as she looked from the cute, clueless, innocent boy to the shifty old reprobate who'd been so quick to tell him that tipping was a no-no. "Is that so. And since his father is drinking the alcohol-free sake, there's no chance at all of a level playing field. Grandpapa, would you do me a favor?" she asked, turning her sweetest, most endearing look on her grandfather.

Pyotr, a grizzled veteran of battles such as this, merely looked dubiously back at her. "Not if it mean cheating Genma out of the service he is paying for."

"I wouldn't ask that, anymore than I'd ask you to stop faking that silly accent," Marta said, smiling as she sensed the increasing chance of victory. "What I wanted was..."

-----------------------

By the time Genma returned his attention to Ranma, his son was smiling again, moodiness seemingly forgotten. A good sign, Genma thought with relief, blissful in his ignorance that Ranma's discontentment had melted away on noticing the origami figurine again.

Despite Ranma's recovering his good spirits, Genma still waited a little longer before reopening the conversation. At first he was pondering the best way to proceed, then he was waiting for Ranma to return from the men's room. At last, when he felt ready, he asked quietly, "Can you tell me why, Ranma?"

"Huh? Why what?"

"Why you don't think you should help Akane with the biggest problem I haven't been working on." Genma shook his head, which left him feeling momentarily dizzy at how incomprehensible his one and only son was being. "I was counting on you, Boy. I'd do my part, you'd tie up the loose ends, and together we'd get Akane to where she needs to be. You say that matters to you. You say you're glad to see me working with her. But, but you won't get involved too? Just sit back and watch? You... you wound me, Ranma. I really do mean it this time." He clamped his mouth shut against the desire to say more, to spill all the hidden fears and hopes that had driven him down this road.

_'Sake must be getting to the old man,'_ Ranma mused. Genma's normal tolerance was a lot better than the measly one-and-a-half bottles he'd put away so far, but then again his father didn't usually get the high-quality stuff. Maybe it was stronger or something. That at least would explain the honest hurt he was sure he'd heard in his father's voice. He hesitated a moment longer, pride struggling against the emotions raised by Genma's wounded, bewildered expression.

A moment before Ranma found his voice, Genma spoke again. "Why are you glad? You said you're happy I put so much into working with her, that I brought her so far. Are, are you just happy that all those hours were hours I wasn't getting in your way?"

"No!" Ranma said forcefully. Before he knew it he'd shot one hand across the table to clasp his father's arm. "It ain't like that, Pop! I... I was proud of ya. Happy to get a chance to feel that way again, to see you could put that kinda effort out for somebody other than me. Glad to see you could bring Akane to where she needed to be, 'specially cause if you'd just tried the same stuff you did with me she'd've bailed for sure. Seein' you do something for somebody other than me, givin' her what she needed an' doing such a good job of it... it makes me proud of you. Maybe even the proudest I've ever been."

"R- Really?" Genma asked. "That's what I hoped for. One big thing I was counting on. One thing I wanted to get out of all this, some respect from my only son. But..." He blinked owlishly at Ranma. "You already are? Even though Akane hasn't defeated Shampoo yet?"

Ranma stared, then let his hand drop and gave a bark of laughter. "Mwahaha! Akane beat Shampoo? Not in a million years. Just cause you turned her into a martial artist for real, don't make up for sixteen years' head start. An' it sure don't bridge the gap that opened up when Cologne decided to teach Shampoo the Air style." He shook his head. "You don't need to pull off some impossible thing like that to get me proud of ya, Pop. Just keep on doin' what you're doin'."

"But... you say that, but what I'm doing was counting on you to do your part too." Genma fought off a new feeling of dizziness, this time from the way the conversation kept moving in circles. Or maybe not circles, he thought; they were making some kind of progress at least. Maybe it was spirals. He snorted, shook his head, and tried to push away thoughts of Amazons and their techniques.

"Why?"

"What do you mean, why? Akane is your fiancée. When she needs help from you, you shouldn't have to ask me why you ought to give it to her!"

Ranma was silent for awhile, staring down at the glass in his hands. At last, though, his jaw clenched and he looked Genma straight in the eyes. "I already told you. I tried. I couldn't get through to her. You wanna blame me for that?"

"Not really," Genma answered. And he didn't. He just wanted Ranma to fix the mistake.

"You sure, Pop? Cause this one time it might be the right thing to do. I dunno what it is, but Akane needs something in a teacher that I can't give her. That don't seem to be true for you training her, though. That's why I'm keeping out of it from now on no matter what you say." He paused for a minute to drink the rest of his tea, then continued. "You're the one who knows what Akane needs and how to get her there. Like I already said, seein' you do all this makes me as proud of you as I've ever been. You don't need me trying something that doesn't even help anyway." He shot his father a sharp glance. "An' Akane don't need that either. She's finally learning for real, an' she don't need any training setbacks because her sensei wanted to work that stupid engagement crud into the mix."

"I wish you wouldn't talk like that about my dream, Boy," Genma muttered into his cup.

"Too bad, Old Man," Ranma said remorselessly. "I know you an' Mr. Tendo think the sun rises an' sets on that one dumb promise, but for cryin' out loud wake up! It wouldn't do nothing to make Anything Goes stronger. In fact it'd be like chaining it down, cause it'd take away opportunities for me _and Akane_ to bring new stuff into the style. Right now all you should be focusing on is getting her to that point, where she's good enough to do the whole 'analyze your opponent's style and take the best stuff' bit."

"Is that what you're doing with the Amazons lately? Picking up new and greater secrets to work into Anything Goes?"

"Kinda," Ranma said uncomfortably. He shrugged and took a drink from his glass, then did a double-take as he remembered it had been empty a minute ago. Never mind noticing whatever barmaid had been here; he hadn't even seen the refill happen! _'Maybe I oughta borrow another couple sheets of paper off Takeru and make something for each of the girls.'_

"What do you mean, 'kinda'?" Genma asked.

Ranma squirmed. "Well, I mean, I'm learning new things, which does make those things part of Anything Goes. But..." He hesitated, then rejected the impulse to dodge the issue. "But... no, that ain't _all_ I'm doing." Genma might not have used that exact wording, but Ranma had heard what his father meant. "And it's not like Shampoo's my opponent anyway."

"Then what is she, Ranma?" his father countered.

Ranma took a few deep breaths for courage, then started with the easiest. "She's my sensei," he said. "I dunno whether Cologne meant for me to learn this stuff all along, but she's only actually teaching it to Shampoo. It was her call to pass it on to me, an' the old ghoul said that meant it was gonna be Shampoo's job to train me. So far she's taught me two techniques outta the Air style, an' she ain't got mad or jealous or nothing when I was better than her at modifying and improving them. She was just proud of me.

"More than my sensei, she's my friend," he continued, edging nearer to the line his father wasn't going to want him to cross. "She's gotta be the one person I've got the most in common with, the one I've shared the most stuff with. She's helped me to understand just how much of the junk that's gone on for so long needs to change, and also helped me make those changes by doing some of her own." He paused, then acknowledged, "Of course a lot of that was what she hoped for herself, when she pushed so hard to break some of the old, stupid patterns around here. I'm not ignoring that, an' I'm not denying that she's made mistakes doing it. But if she forgives me for all the times that was true for me, how can I not do the same back to her?"

"You might want to keep in mind how much grief you've gotten over the past year, Boy. Sometimes you _should_ hold a grudge. Or at least remember what mistakes were made."

"Y'know, Pop, you might not be the best person to give me advice like that. Not with as worried as you were lookin' earlier," Ranma said. "You sure acted like it mattered to you, whether or not I respect you an' care about you. That wasn't just another Saotome Desperation Technique, was it?"

Genma's shoulders sagged visibly, and he shook his head. "Not unless telling the truth is only a last resort," he mumbled.

_'In other words, yes,'_ Ranma thought. But at least it wasn't one of the bad techniques. Pushing aside jokes at his father's expense, he said gently, "Maybe the real lesson is, don't hold the other person's mistakes against them when they're trying to learn better. Cheer up, Pop. Even if I just go by that, you're still okay."

Genma just had time to brighten up, but not to say anything before his son continued, "You and Shampoo both. Heck, it even applies to Kodachi, and Akane, at least as far as the Art goes, and Ucchan too if she'd been making any big mistakes lately. There's even a chance for Ryoga and Mousse. Things really are changing for good around here. Shampoo kicked it all off, and what she did was enough to make me see how much we needed some change. If it wasn't for her we wouldn't even be here right now, me bein' able to say I'm proud of what you've accomplished. You oughta thank her one of these days."

"I'd be glad to thank her for her efforts as your _sensei_ and your _friend_," Genma pronounced with what was truly impressive subtlety, given his condition and personal limits.

"Right. I didn't finish answering that question, did I," Ranma replied. He paused a moment longer to wrestle the last vestiges of prudence into submission, then said, "She's my fiancée. And... and it wasn't exactly what I was tryin' to accomplish... but she's the only one that happened cause of what _I_ did, not a certain someone else who's lucky he's workin' to do better nowadays."

"Ranma..." his father rumbled, a warning like the first audible growls of an awakening volcano.

"Hope you ain't trying to impress me there, Pop," Ranma said, smirking back at him. Akane made better threats in her sleep. If his father was smashed enough to think _that_ might scare him, then he had nothing to worry about. "And don't forget what ya told me," he nodded toward the long bar, "about why this place don't need a bouncer."

Irritably, and with considerable difficulty, Genma pushed aside the first dozen responses that came to mind. _'Gotta remember, don't show anger, don't show fear. They can smell fear. Wait, that's predators, not the boy. Probably.' _He shook his head, which seemed to help clear it. "Remember what I said about being careful what you say here?" he chided. "The whole place is full of martial artists. Anything you say about a martial artist who's not here right now, is pretty damn likely to get back to them anyway. What d'you think would happen if the Amazons heard you saying that fiancée line?"

Ranma stared steadily back. "Honestly, Pop? _Nothing_. I don't think Cologne would do anything, 'cept maybe give me a grin and a cackle. Not exactly pleasant but nothing to freak out about. After yesterday I don't think Mousse would do anything other than just glare a little harder. And Shampoo..." He shrugged, then flashed a not-so-nice grin at his father. "She'd just take it in her stride. I mean, I already told her told her to her face it was okay to introduce herself to Mom as my wife..."

He'd mainly said this just to see how Genma would react, and he wasn't disappointed. His father let out a great wheezing gasp for breath, clutched at his chest with one hand, desperately grabbed his sake with the other, and chugged the rest of the bottle in one go.

"Have you lost your mind?" Genma half-demanded, half-pled. "Boy, you're playing games with your entire future here!"

"An' it's just supposed to be parents who do that, not the kids themselves?" Ranma shot back, his obnoxious grin still in place but strained a little now. It was hard not to let his honest surprise and pleasure shine through it; he'd never imagined Genma would react this well to his ploy. He'd halfway expected an explosion better than Akane's, not this mild response. It almost looked like his father was trusting him to ultimately make his own decisions! "It is _my_ future, y'know."

Genma didn't say anything in immediate reply, instead taking several deep breaths to calm down and focus. "Seriously, now. You're just pulling my chain here, aren't you? Shampoo didn't _really_ say anything like that to Nodoka."

Ranma frowned. "Actually that's true, Pop, but... how could ya tell?"

"Because of what your mother has and hasn't said to me when we're alone. I know very well that she's met Shampoo, and if that Amazon had called herself your wife I'd certainly have heard of that too." Genma sighed. "Look, Ranma, I know this isn't easy on either of us. But... but I did want for us to talk seriously now." Well, he'd at least wanted serious answers from Ranma, and so far he seemed to be doing best at getting them by being mostly honest too. "If Shampoo did face up to Nodoka like that, do you know what your mother would do?"

"No," the younger Saotome admitted, his frown deepening. "What?"

"I don't know either," Genma said solemnly.

"So much for serious," Ranma muttered, then took another few gulps of his drink.

"I'm _being_ serious!" Genma shot back. "Boy, your mother is a complicated woman of strong will and even stronger opinions. I know how to press some of her buttons, like that excellent advice I gave you earlier today. But actually having a gaijin introduce herself as your wife, completely ignoring the honor-pledge to the Tendos...?" He shrugged helplessly. "There's no way in the world to know how she'd take it or what she thought was the right thing to do. That's what I meant about 'playing with your future', even more than your joke about saying something so foolish to Shampoo."

Ranma stared steadily back. "That part was for real, Old Man," he said, waiting just long enough that Genma had already swallowed his latest gulp of sake. He might or might not round off this afternoon with a little spilled alcohol for the sake of appearances, but he wasn't about to get that alcohol by way of a fatherly spit-take.

"Ranma, I know Shampoo didn't say that," Genma growled.

"So that makes me a liar?" Ranma growled right back. "Did it cross your mind that maybe she didn't take me up on my offer? Huh? Did ya stop to think that maybe Shampoo thought 'fiancée' was what she wanted to say anyway?"

"I guess it would be understandable," Genma said, backpedaling once again, recognizing the necessity but not happy about it. He took a moment to remind himself of what Ranma had already said, about feeling proud of him for the things he'd done right lately. It didn't settle every fear raised by this latest revelation, but it did provide a powerful counterbalance. "After all, I've heard her call herself your fiancée, not push for more."

Ranma thought back to the conversation he'd had with Shampoo after that first meeting between the Amazon and his mother, and the reasons she'd given for her choice. Smiling softly once more as his gaze drifted down to the origami maiden, he said, "Yeah. Somewhere along the way she figured out that thinking things through and working for what you want was the way to go." He tossed back another few swigs of tea. "Wish everyone around here had learned that as good as she did."

Genma heaved a long and weary sigh, massaged his temples for a moment, and decided to lay most of his cards on the table. "Ranma, if you're trying to say you've decided none of the other girls can stack up to Shampoo, just spit it out," he demanded, his voice heavy-laden with worry, unhappiness, and disapproval.

It would have been a better idea to keep the emotions out of it. Particularly that last one.

His son's eyes narrowed and seemed to flash. "What if I did say that, Old Man?" he snapped, his tone hard and sharp enough to cut through all the burden his father was once again laying on him. "What'd you do then, huh? Stand up as tall an' straight as you could, and ask the heavens what you did to deserve such a disappointment of a son? Try to drag things back to how they used to be, when I just did whatever you said? Would you push as hard as you could to get what you want, never mind what it costs ya or whether there's a better way than just bulldozing straight ahead?" Ranma paused, scraping together every shred of determination and righteous anger he could find, then lashed out with his final questions. "Would you shrug and say 'my way or the highway', and wash your hands of me? Kick me out of the family for daring to make my own choice with my life? Would ya—"

"NO!" Genma burst out, silencing the blitz of questions before they could get any more painful. That one exclamation seemed to take all the strength he had left. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet and halting. "That isn't... isn't what I was trying to say. Really it's just the opposite. If... I didn't... I wouldn't have asked you that question, if I couldn't bear to hear the answer.

"So please... please don't ask anything else like what you were. I can't, can't bear that. Don't want to think you'd think I might think like that. I've given my whole life to raise you to be a better man than me... No matter what, I couldn't bear to lose you... I—"

It was Ranma's turn to break in before listening got any more painful. "Pop, that's enough," he said gently. "I... I'm sorry too. I didn't really think that. Heck, I knew ya wouldn't turn your back on me for something like this. It's just... the way you said it... I was just trying to finally get past all that 'because I said so' crap, not hurt you... Ah, hell. I'm just sorry, that's all. But I'm still glad that when I asked those questions, I wasn't askin' them for real."

"Then... then will you listen to what I think?" Genma asked.

"Yeah, if you'll say the same thing back to me."

"Of course. Th—"

"Y'know," Ranma said as a thought struck him, not even realizing he'd interrupted, "this is kinda like what I already did with Mousse an' Ryoga. Had to face them down, get past the old stupid stuff that's been around for way too long. That's pretty much what we're doing now, huh Pop? And I made some mistakes with how I handled it with both those guys, just like now, but it was less mistakes with Mousse than with Ryoga, just like it's been less mistakes with you than with Mousse. Ya think that's a good sign? Plus the fact that there's no way I coulda sat down with either of them and talked about stuff like this."

Genma blinked, surprised at the digression. The idea of signaling Pyotr to sober Ranma up a bit crossed his mind, but he decided to hold off on that. Ranma's temper had flared awhile back, true, but he'd calmed down amazingly quickly and was looking pretty mellow now. And there wasn't any danger of the boy being so far gone that he wouldn't remember any of the progress they were making tomorrow; if that were true there'd have been a much larger change in his speech patterns, not the rambling and the bit of roughening that Genma thought he'd noticed.

"Yeah, could be a good sign," he allowed, then moved to put the conversation back on track. "Gettin' back to—"

"You know, Mousse wasn't the only person Cologne an' I talked about two days ago," Ranma confided. "Took me a while, but I eventually remembered to ask about Kodachi too. She made it to Amazon territory okay an' has settled down there to learn whatever they've got to teach her. Cologne says that she's got one of the Elders working with her, an' that things look real hopeful." He looked off into the distance, as if to see all the way to China. "Six months ago I never woulda thought I'd say this, but I'm glad I met Kodachi Kuno... not for me, but for her. In the end, I gave her the help she needed from me. That makes up for all the pain an' then some."

"Your mother would be proud," Genma hazarded, not knowing whether it was true or not. He'd had no clue that anything had happened with the Kuno girl, and Ranma's ramblings were awfully vague. It was also worrying that it sounded like Ranma had gotten Kodachi to go to Amazon lands. Then again, he didn't want to be with Kodachi; perhaps him sending her to the Joketsuzoku should be reassuring. In any case, if Ranma really had given the girl some kind of critical help, Nodoka doubtless would be proud... at least once she got over the disappointment of her son sending away a rich, beautiful young noblewoman. "Could you—"

"And what about Mom, anyway? Like you said, she's got a lot of opinions an' she ain't afraid to act on 'em." Ranma gave his father a frank, manly stare. "You know what? My original plan was to just use a balloon full of Instant Falcon water on Mousse, but after Mom pushed that pack of Lucky Stallion Extra-Larges on me I figured maybe I could at least get some use out of it. I tried to use those instead of the balloons, but every dang one of them had tiny little holes punched all through it. Safe sex my ass," he grumbled. "So did Mom inspire you to develop the Saotome Desperation Techniques, or did that part of you rub off on her?"

"Probably that second one," Genma mused. "But anyway—"

"It ain't real easy, figuring out how to deal with her agenda. I'm willing to bet she'd just 'solve' this whole engagement mess by sayin' everyone got to share me, an' whoever wasn't willin' to put up with that would get kicked out of the running for good. Heck, I guess if I was ready to grab Shampoo and let that be that, I could just get Mom to go ahead an' do that, an' make it look like that sounded just fine to me. I dunno whether Shampoo'd be willing to share me out with anybody else, but with how she reacted to Ling-Ling and Lung-Lung that one time, she's at least the one who could fake it the best and longest. That'd be one way out of all this, I guess, if I didn't mind losin' Ucchan and Akane for good and all even as friends." Ranma gave a humorless chuckle. "Not exactly the future I wanta build, you know?"

"No, I don't know," Genma pointed out. If he had known that, he wouldn't have needed to ask. "But..." He paused, waiting for the inevitable interruption.

"But what?" Ranma asked after a few seconds had gone by.

"But I'm glad to hear it. Ranma..." Another hesitation, longer this time as Genma tried to think of what he needed and wanted to say. Nothing fancy or clever was coming to mind. At last he abandoned any hopes of winning Ranma over through sheer eloquent brilliance, and just said, "I don't think you should marry Shampoo."

Ranma's expression went from contemplative to scowling in the blink of an eye. He stared his father in the eye, opened his mouth... and then slowly closed it again. Genma kept quiet as well, studying his son as carefully as he could. Ranma was clearly thinking hard about what he wanted to say next; the elder Saotome was certain of that much at least. He tried and failed to shake the impression that his son was just trying to think of the best way to blow him off.

"Look, Pop," Ranma said at last. "More than anything else, I want ya to listen to me say one thing. I want you to take it to heart, an' not give me any grief over it or step over the line I'm about to draw. Okay?" he said, his voice as firm as ever Genma had heard it.

The elder Saotome braced himself and said, "All right." If that was how it was going to be, at least he'd know. At least he wouldn't blunder into something that would push his boy away for good.

"Good. Then here's what I want to say to you." Ranma heaved a sigh, and when he exhaled the remainder of his ire seemed to go with it. "I am seventeen years old. An' it's only the last year where I've had any real, serious exposure to girls at all. I ain't ready to talk about marriage yet, not to Shampoo, not to anybody! I know I'm not normal, and even ignoring Mom's 'man among men' thing, I wouldn't want to be. But there are some good things about being normal, some things that those kinda guys and girls do better than me and all the rest of the people involved in my life, and heck! Anything Goes is supposed to be about taking the best stuff from whatever you run into, right?"

"I... can't say I'm following you, Son," Genma admitted. "What are you talking about? Taking what?"

"Simple," Ranma fired back. "The idea of not jumping straight from not knowing how to deal with girls at all, to bein' married to one. That's not the way to do it. Even if honor was enough to keep the marriage itself together, it ain't enough to make it happy, or, or anything of what it ought to be. I'm not gonna hurt my wife or myself like that. That's not the future I'm gonna make for my family, Old Man, not with Shampoo, not with anyone."

He heaved a long sigh. "How come everybody's always thought I'm ready for that anyway?" he asked plaintively, his eyes not focused on Genma for the moment. "I'm only seventeen. I oughta be learning this stuff at least a little safely, not have everybody expect me to charge on ahead like I already knew it all. I don't. I'm not ready to make those kinds of choices."

"Hmm," Genma said. "So what you're saying here is, you want to date and do all that usual teenage romance stuff? And that's all for now?"

"Yeah... I guess..." Ranma said hesitantly. Then, more strongly, "That's right."

"And..." _'I'll drag an admission out of the boy even if it kills me.'_ Genma blinked. _'I mean, him.'_ "And would Shampoo be your first choice for partner in that dance?"

"Yes." He said it quietly, but Genma didn't hear any hesitation at all (and he'd certainly listened hard enough for it). "Can't say that's how it'll be for good and all, but yeah... that is what I want." _'As close as I can get, as far as she and I can go together, without me blinking and suddenly choices for the rest of my life are over and done with before I was ready to make them with my eyes wide open.'_ He wasn't quite buzzed enough to say that last part out loud, though.

"So what are you going to do, Boy?" the elder Saotome said wearily. "If you do start dating her, you might as well be saying you want to throw away the other engagements and the girls that go with them. Because that's what will happen."

"That's _not_ what's gonna happen," Ranma said determinedly. "I ain't throwing away Ucchan or Akane or anybody. And I think you're wrong anyway, Pop. If I was gonna stand up tall and shout to the heavens that Shampoo was all I wanted for the rest of my life and damn everyone else's feelings, then yeah—I could see Ucchan being hurt enough to leave, maybe for good." He grimaced painfully, shaking his head to deny the thought. "And Akane could be that mad. But that ain't where I am. I already said I'm not ready to make any rest-of-my-life choices yet. That means not deliberately an' not by default either."

"You'd better have a plan then," Genma said, staring down into his glass. "Take it from me, just sitting around and hoping things will go your way isn't going to cut the mustard."

"That's not what I've been doing," Ranma protested. It had been a knee-jerk response, but a few seconds after uttering it he blinked, seeming to be struck by the words. "It really isn't," he said, the words emerging slowly, contemplatively. "What I've been doing with Shampoo is going along with what she wants, or at least as much of it as I thought was a good idea. And... and I've done the same thing with Ucchan! I joined the Astronomy Club with her, I've helped her train a few times, I cut class with her just the other day... heck, you could almost say I haven't shown any favoritism to Shampoo over Ucchan at all!"

"Uh-huh," Genma said, his dry tone a contrast all the sake he'd drunk.

Ranma deflated noticeably. "Well... prob'ly shouldn't go that far. But... but if she wants something, she needs ta say so. We can go on from there."

"And what about Akane?" Genma wanted to know.

Ranma shrugged. "Ask me again on the day she ever asks for somethin' for herself," he said steadily. "Instead of just trying to keep me away from whoever. But seriously, Pop. You'll be a lot better off if you finally let go of that dumb promise you an' Mr. Tendo made." He finished off the rest of his glass, then stood up to make a return visit to the men's room. He turned to go, then said over his shoulder, "Because as far as I can tell, the only good that ever came out of it was getting us here for when the Tendos needed us. Me to save Akane's butt, and now you to get her to where I don't have to."

-----------------------

"Hey, buddy. You think you could pick up the pace a little?"

Genma looked up, startled out of contemplating the amber depths of his drink. "What was that?"

"You've been here thirty minutes now and you're still nursing your first beer." The bartender—a thin, weedy little man who contrasted as sharply to Pyotr Kareshev as did Pyotr's tavern to this dive—gestured up and down the long bar. Every seat was filled, and there were people standing nearby waiting for places to open there rather than sit down at the last few open tables. It wouldn't take an observer long to figure out why this might be. The lone serving girl working the tables seemed to have recognized long ago that there was no way to give timely service to everyone, and so she approached equality from the other direction. There were people seated out there who'd been nursing their same drink for thirty minutes, but in no case was this by their own choice.

"These seats up front are in kind of high demand, you know?" the man continued. "If you're not gonna drink any faster than that, I'll have to ask you to move back to the back. Or rather, not me. Tatsu'll be the one doing the asking." He nodded toward the bouncer. Here at least there was some similarity to the last bar he'd visited, Genma saw. This man was as tall and heavily muscled as Pyotr, though that was where the resemblance ended. He lacked the Russian's padding or air of general goodwill.

Genma was also certain that he could flatten this man quicker than he could finish his beer.

It was therefore without much concern that he turned back to face the bartender. He'd never been to this particular bar before, and was beginning to regret whatever whim of fate had made him select it as tonight's destination. Still, maybe he should give the man another chance. "Actually I was waiting for a quiet moment, when I could talk about my problems to someone," he hinted. "Maybe get some advice, maybe just some relief."

"Right," the nameless bartender said, nodding decisively. "Tatsu!"

The bouncer didn't hurry over, opting instead to stride across the room with grim inevitability. This was fortunate, because it gave Genma time enough to decide that yes, he was irritated, but no, he wasn't irritated enough to demolish the place in a barroom brawl. He reminded himself that he'd come all this way, leaving Nerima well behind, because he _hadn't_ wanted to deal with any craziness tonight. And therefore he didn't need or want to start any himself.

Nevertheless, he wasn't quite ready to let this go entirely. As Tatsu passed the last table between himself and Genma, the Saotome master got up and turned calmly around to face him.

Tatsu had already slowed to an amble, since it looked like this patron was going to be reasonable after all. Thus, when Genma's form shimmered and seemed to morph into a spectral panda twice as large as Tatsu himself, the bouncer stumbled but didn't quite fall on his face. The retreat he beat was much faster than his advance had been.

"Oh shit." The bartender's voice, choked and tiny though it was, echoed through the sudden tense silence. "You're from Nerima, ain't you."

"That's right," Genma growled. The panda image was just an aura projection and didn't affect his ability to speak, but he still felt obliged to use a harsh, guttural tone reminiscent of his late cursed form. "This place isn't worth my time. Be glad it's not worth my effort either." He turned and strode toward the door, a process made easier by the wide-open clear path that appeared immediately. The door even swung open just before he reached it, though this was due to someone outside on his way in.

"Well, well, if it isn't Genma!" Happosai proclaimed, staring wide-eyed up at the chi panda towering (and cowering) over him. "I didn't expect to run into you here."

The image of the panda wavered and fuzzed for a moment, as if viewed on the screen of a television that was about to faint. Then, in the blink of an eye, the panda turned, dashed away to the side, and dove headfirst through the large glass window facing the street.

Happosai tracked the motion out of the corner of his eye, but he didn't move to follow. In fact, he didn't even turn his head, instead just standing and staring up into the space where the panda had been.

The tableau remained frozen for several long seconds. Finally, Happi rolled his eyes and said, "I'm impressed, Genma. Now why don't you quit before you make me change my mind?"

With a morose sigh, Genma faded into view. "I hoped you wouldn't see through that," he muttered.

"You've manage to cobble together a half-assed version of my Dimensional Warp technique. Like I said, impressive, but you're hardly up to my level with the move. And that distraction... well, again, nicely done, especially breaking the window with your aura alone. But you're a Saotome, Genma—I _expect_ distractions from you. I know you too well to fall for something like this, and you ought to know me too."

"What you really mean is, I needed there to be a few pretty girls here to help distract you," Genma grumbled.

"Exactly!" Happosai crowed. "Genma m'boy, I can see all the effort I put into that last training trip has paid off! When I let you and Soun slink home with your tails behind your legs, I expected you'd just laze around and lose whatever little bit of shape I'd managed to pound you into. And instead you kept pushing yourself, long and hard enough to learn such a difficult new technique all by yourself? And now you're even showing me a little backbone?"

"I'm sorry, Master! Please forgive me, Master!" Genma shouted, falling immediately into the Crouch of the Wild Tiger. Pride, dignity, and respect were all well and good, but if it was a choice between sacrificing them or risking Happosai getting serious about training him again... well, that wasn't even a choice at all.

"You're only looking more and more ready for some real Anything Goes," Happosai warned.

As quickly as he'd fallen to the floor he left it again, shooting up to stand tall and straight and vibrating with tension. Possibilities danced through his mind, as he frantically tried to decide just how stupid a mistake he'd have to make to derail this train of terror.

Before Genma could decide between 'attack the Master head-on' and 'flirt with the serving wench', Happosai spoke again. "However, I'm in no hurry for something like that. I only just got back to Tokyo, haven't even made it to Nerima yet. So why don't we have a seat at one of these tables, and you can tell me about what's been going on lately."

"Huh? Here?" Genma repeated, blinking his way back to the immediate present. "This place isn't worth it, Master. Let's go somewhere else." Hopefully that would give him a chance to escape, but even if it didn't at least he'd be suffering in a higher-quality bar.

"No way," Happosai said, his expression mellow. "I like this place."

"Um," Genma said intelligently. "Ah. Hm. Are you sure the place didn't change owners while you were gone?"

The Anything Goes Grandmaster shrugged. "Don't know, don't care. It's the same guy behind the bar, and that's all I need. Now come on." He turned and ambled toward a distant table. After a few seconds he called out, "Hey, Kenta! Have a Master's Special Number Three waiting at table seventeen by the time I get there!"

Genma watched in sudden understanding as the bartender and serving girl sprang into frantic action. The tray full of perfectly-mixed drinks was sitting on the table well before Happosai got there, along with a barstool high enough to give him easy access to the tabletop. _'It figures that the Master's idea of a good place is where he's the only one getting this kind of service,'_ he thought, shaking his head. He sat down at the table, then put in an order for another beer.

Happosai let loose a disgusted snort. "Forget that!" he called, intercepting Kenta in mid-dive toward the beer tap. Turning back to his sometime-student, the ancient lecher said, "I spent a lot of time training these bozos. We're not letting them get away with an easy little order like that!"

Genma blinked. "But... I _wanted_ a beer."

"Too bad," Happi said. "Here, try one of these." He flicked his pipe against one of the more colorful drinks arranged on the tray, sending it arcing across the table to land in front of Genma. Not a drop was spilled, though the bright, festive umbrella did spin out of the glass and come to rest perched jauntily behind Genma's left ear.

The elder Saotome looked down at the glass. He could almost see the shimmer of the alcohol fumes rising out of it. Nothing he couldn't handle, of course... but what was true for one drink would most definitely not be true for five. On the other hand, when Happosai was in a good enough mood to press a drink on you, you _really_ didn't want to spoil that mood. He took a long, deep drink, scraped up a grin, and resolved to stretch the rest of the glass as long as he could.

"Ahhhh!" Happosai, by contrast, had already drained one tumbler dry. "Nice to see Kenta hasn't lost his touch, even with me being gone for awhile. So tell me, Genma—anything interesting happen while I was away?" The ancient lecher grinned widely. "Any new high-spirited cuties turn up in town to chase after your boy?"

"Not that I've noticed," Genma said slowly, trying to drag the answering process out as long as his drink. It had been quite a shock, seeing the Demon Master pop up out of nowhere, and Genma had the distinct impression that it hadn't completely worn off yet. He'd only just now recovered enough to see more than the immediate, right-in-front-of-him reality. For instance, the Master couldn't possibly have any idea how big the answer to his casual question was going to be. And, Genma remembered with slowly dawning horror, he wasn't much going to like some of what he was about to hear.

Or rather, _wasn't_ about to hear. "But something like that could have happened," Genma hurriedly continued. "For all I know the boy could have picked up another five suitors or more. He left a little while ago on a training journey, just snuck out in the night with barely even a note to tell us what he was up to!"

The Saotome master sighed theatrically. "Of course Shampoo and Ukyo ran away after him as soon as they heard about it. It didn't take Soun long to get Akane to go after him too, but I guess that took the last of his spirit. With both of them gone he's collapsed into a shell of his former self. He doesn't have the energy to train, or come drinking with me tonight, or anything." Genma paused for a moment, partly to fabricate more details, partly to suppress a snort. As pathetic as the excuse he'd given for Soun's absence was, the truth was even worse.

"And it's not just Soun feeling that down," he continued. "I never thought I'd see a day when Kasumi's cooking didn't satisfy, but that's just what's happening. You can taste her depression and loneliness for Ranma and Akane in every noodle. It's getting harder and harder to choke it down without showing her how bad it is. Even the food at a pathetic dive like this would be better," he said, raising his voice enough to be sure Kenta would hear. It was the only way immediately available to work off a bit of stress, or at least the only way that didn't involve slamming down enough alcohol to also wash away any chance of this gambit working.

"It's almost like Tendo's home is a miniature little picture of all Nerima," Genma confided. "Because it feels like the whole town's down in the dumps. Nobody seems to take any joy in life anymore; they just drift along going through the motions. It's like the entire ward had its heart ripped out when Ranma and all the girls left." He heaved another sigh, one even longer, deeper, and sadder than before. "I've tried to distract myself by training hard, but sometimes I just have to get away from it all. That's why I was here tonight, Master."

"And I guess that's why Shampoo answered when I phoned in a delivery for the Cat Café twenty minutes ago," Happosai replied.

The Master's tone and expression had been so mildly agreeable that Genma actually nodded and said, "Yes, exactly," before the meaning of the words hit him. When it did, he gave a flinch that sent the umbrella flying and nearly did the same thing to his glasses and headkerchief. "Um..."

"You know, Genma," Happi continued in that same light, agreeable tone, "there was a time when I went around picking up as many moxibustion techniques as I could. I mean, if I was going to use my pipe as a weapon, I might as well do it with style, right? I learned a lot more than just that Ultimate Weakness mark I burned into Ranma's back." He pinned Genma with a warning glare. "One of 'em makes the victim answer any question you give him, completely and truthfully. That's the worst part of it, but the fact that it's applied to your ingrate of a student's tongue probably isn't much better."

"I'm sorry Master! Please forgive me! I was just trying to keep you away from Nerima because you really won't like what's going on there now! My wife is living with us at Tendo's, Ranma and Akane aren't getting along nearly well enough anymore, the boy's gotten much too close to Shampoo instead and there's no sign of that stopping anytime soon, Shampoo turns into a falcon now instead of a cat, the Amazons cured my curse entirely and let Ranma swap his for a falcon too, the reason I've gotten stronger was to impress Ranma and also because I've been giving Akane advanced training, and Tendo's not here with me tonight because he took Akane out for ice cream to try and bribe her into giving up on training for real!" Genma ran out of words and breath at the same time.

"Your first story was better," Happosai noted, pulling out his pipe and giving it a few ominous twirls.

Genma blanched and clamped his mouth shut, trying desperately to figure out how to proclaim his innocence without giving Happosai an opening.

_'Oh, right.'_ Out came the signs.

Happosai just frowned, then sent his pipe spinning through the air. It snagged a glass of beer out of a nearby drinker's hand and arced back to him, the purloined drink somehow resting steady atop the disk formed by the whirling pipe. "If you're going to pull that shtick you might as well be a panda for real," he grumbled, then threw the fluid into Genma's face. He wasn't about to waste one of his own drinks on this—plus he wasn't sure they contained enough water to actually trigger the change—but the watered-down beer this joint served its lesser customers would certainly suffice.

Certainly should have sufficed, the Grandmaster mentally corrected, his eyes bugging out at the sight of an utterly untransformed Genma. "Izanami's intestines!" he exclaimed, an oath that hadn't been heard in Japan for over two hundred years. "You really did cure your curse?!"

"Not me. Like I said, Shampoo and her great-grandmother did," Genma replied, laying a little necessary groundwork. He only had one idea left that might divert the Master's wrath, but that was a fate worth almost anything to avoid.

Still, better to make sure of one thing first. "Master, if you called in your order twenty minutes ago, does that mean Shampoo will be here any minute now?"

"Afraid not," Happosai said regretfully. "I figured I'd been away long enough that I didn't need to put much effort into disguising my voice, but I was wrong. That little spitfire let me get the whole order out, then sweet as you please told me that it'd be waiting for me nice and hot in one of the lower circles of hell. Then she hung up." And if Happosai was any judge, the Cat Café would be needing not only a new phone, but a new whatever-the-old-phone-had-been-sitting-on too.

"I'm sorry, Master." Genma could say that with genuine feeling, since it sounded like if Happosai's ploy had succeeded he would have been delayed enough that his student would have missed him. Or avoided him, anyway.

"Eh, you win some, you lose some. Now, getting back to more important matters..." Happosai's eyes narrowed. "How much of the rest of that spiel was true? Is little Nodoka honestly back for good?"

"Yes, Master."

"Guess that's the reason you haven't dropped any pounds even though you've been training harder." Happosai well remembered the rhapsodies his student had sung, back in the days before his refreshing little decade-plus nap. It had quickly gotten old, listening to Genma alternately praise Nodoka's cooking and lament the fact that he was away from it. "Shampoo's ditched that cat curse, you say?"

"Yes, Master."

"So Cologne finally got tired of her great-granddaughter fighting with that much of a handicap. Can't say I'm surprised." Happosai paused, pinning Genma with a beady-eyed stare. "And you also said something about Ranma swapping out his curse like that too?"

Genma sweated, gulped, and managed to say, "No, Master." With the initial, biggest part out of the way, the rest came easier. "Or at least, that's not what I meant. Yes, he did, but it's not like the boy's _responsible_ for it or anything. It was that old woman's plot all along, with Shampoo as her cat's-paw. Without any of his older, wiser... um, elders here to look out for him, he was easy prey."

"I see." Happosai was quiet for a very long time, partly because this was a matter which needed deep consideration, partly because he enjoyed watching Genma sweat.

The tension stretched and stretched, and finally Genma could take it no longer. "You there! Kenta!" he snapped. "Bring me a Master's Special Number Two and three beers!"

"Yes, Sir!" Kenta blurred into action. In what seemed like the blink of an eye there was a second, full tray of exotic drinks at the Anything Goes table, which Genma ignored completely as he gulped down a beer. This brand was significantly higher quality than his first had been, but it was still low enough on the alcoholometer that he could finish all three without dulling the keen edge of his wits. And with the Master in front of him pondering the utter loss of Ranma-chan, Genma needed all the wits he could get.

"Ah, the Master's Special Number Two," Happi said, breaking his silence. "An excellent choice, Genma. Try the blue drink."

Genma whimpered. He'd only called for the Special so that Happosai wouldn't gripe about the easy order accompanying it. However, the Master's tone had left utterly no wiggle room. He tried the blue drink.

"Not bad, eh, Genma m'boy?" Happosai said a minute later, after his student had, under Happi's watchful eye, emptied the glass.

"What's in it, Master? I counted blueberries, and the deep ocean under a cloudless summer sky, and the kick of a mule, and..." Genma's eyes widened and he shook his head violently. _'Just one glass got me rambling like that? Bloody hell!' _he thought, attempting by sheer force of will and skill and terror to clear his head. It actually seemed to work pretty well.

"Not a bad guess," Happi agreed. "That green one is watermelons, and lovely young ladies playing on the beach, and the warm gentle breeze of spring that carries you so gently off to bliss that you'd never guess it was one-sixty proof. Try it next."

A new spike of panic shunted enough adrenaline into Genma's system to push aside the last of the blue drink. "Ah, Master, I ordered the Special more for you than for me." He wasn't sure when it had happened, but Happosai had already emptied all the drinks on his own tray. In fact, Genma realized, even the two beers that he hadn't touched were now gone, two glasses sitting forlornly next to the one he'd drained himself.

"I'm not in the mood for watermelon," Happosai replied. "Or anything in a Number Two Special. No, it's all yours, Genma. Think of it as a reward, for how hard you've worked lately." He paused for a moment, watching as Genma lifted the tumbler toward his lips. After the Saotome master had taken a few gulps, Happosai continued, "And consolation too, for how you're losing your son to the Chinese Amazons."

"GHHLARRRKLH!!" That was the sound of Genma trying to exclaim a protest while he was already busy swallowing some very potent alcohol. He jerked, spasming like a hooked fish, and managed to send the rest of his drink flying without getting any onto Happosai. The ancient lecher couldn't decide if it had been deliberate or not. In any case he was too busy laughing to put much thought into it.

"Th- that wasn't funny, Master," Genma finally managed to say, his voice as plaintive as it could be with his throat still recovering.

"Says you," Happosai shot back. "Anyway, that was a lot less painful than what could've happened to you. I mean, if I felt like telling Cologne you were trying to get Ranma out of trouble by pinning it all on her." He wouldn't be surprised if she'd let Ranma get away with something like that, in the interests of snagging a son-in-law, but Genma probably wouldn't be treated so gently.

Genma's face twisted, and to the amazement of Happosai he grabbed and downed one of his remaining drinks in a single motion. "Less painful? Hearing something like that? I'd rather the old crone work me over like a punching bag," he said bitterly. "That'd be a lot better than hearing someone joke about Ranma walking away from me for good."

"Actually I was joking about them stealing him away," Happosai pointed out. "And it _was_ a joke, Genma. If Cologne wanted to do that, she'd have been pushing toward it from the start, twisting and prying until she had the boy thinking you were the scum of the earth and the only way to save himself was make a fresh, clean start. The kami know you've given her plenty of ammo to work with." Now _that_ was some Anything Goes style reassurance, he thought to himself.

"Really?" Genma snapped back, his face flushing as his latest drink did its work. "That's... that's not what the boy said. He told me he's _proud_ of me. Of how I'm learning better, and doing better. Of making Akane into an Anything Goes martial artist for real." The flush faded, and he heaved a long sigh. "Of letting him make his own choice... Choices! I meant choices!"

Happosai wondered for a moment just why Genma had been so eager to make that correction. Well, if it was important, he'd drag it out of his student eventually. He supposed the smart money was on it tying back to what Genma had said earlier, about Ranma getting along much better with Shampoo than Akane these days. "So if Ranma said all that, why'd you take it so hard when I joked about him leaving?"

Genma's brow furrowed as he tried to concentrate, but that last drink had pushed him just a little too far over the line. "Ah... I'm not sure," he admitted helplessly. He hadn't been able to answer Happosai's question, but the effort of dredging through his muddled thoughts had at least pulled up a question of his own. "Um, Master? You, you're not taking this like I thought you would..."

"And how did you think I was going to take it, eh?" Happosai wanted to know.

His student shrugged, swaying in his seat. "I dunno. Thought you'd be at least a little pissed, at my boy finally dropping that damned girl curse."

Happosai delayed his answer for a few moments, instead lighting his pipe and taking a long drag. "Who says I'm not?" he said at last, blowing a long stream of smoke which billowed into the form of a very shapely pigtailed girl, then slowly faded away. Happosai didn't say anything until the last trace had vanished. When it did, he heaved a sigh that should have been too big for his body and said, "Of course I'm unhappy. And one of these days I'm going to kick that punk's butt from one side of Tokyo to the other, to express my views on the subject. But that doesn't mean I'm going to run off and do it right now. Not when so much has been happening here while I was gone. No, I'm staying right here and listening to you give me a few more details."

Genma looked down at his Master's Special Number Two. "I bet I could slam down those last two drinks and pass out," he pondered, unfortunately not realizing that he'd said the words out loud.

Then he blinked, trying to get rid of the sudden blur in the center of his vision. As quickly as it had come, it was gone... and the contents of those last two tumblers with it.

"Anything Goes version of the Parlay du Fois Gras," Happosai said. At a nearby table, two men fell slowly out of their chairs to land on the floor—joining the four others who'd previously received Happosai's Number Three bounty—snoring and smiling and much, much happier than they would be in the morning. "You've had enough for now."

"You... you mean, enough that you can pry anything you want outta me?" Genma grumbled.

"You can still think that clearly? Okay, maybe not enough after all," Happosai retorted, glancing toward the long bar.

"Don't bother," Genma said, following it up with a long, lugubrious sigh. "Go on. Ask whatever you want to know. Rather not make you push any more."

"Good." Happosai sank into a meditative posture, considering where to start while keeping an unobtrusive eye on his student. He wouldn't put it past this new Genma to pretend to be more drunk than he actually was, then bolt when it looked like his Master's attention was sufficiently distracted.

Genma did nothing of the sort, though, and after a minute Happosai concluded that he truly was that far under the influence. Shaking off the tiniest pang of disappointment, Happosai said, "You told me Nodoka is living with you now. How'd that happen, anyway?"

"Nabiki," Genma said simply. "Not sure why. She just called Nodoka an' said, 'Come on over! Ranma's ready and waiting to meet ya! No more red-headed girls _here_, nope, nosirree! Jus' make sure you're too busy with your boy to pay any attention to Genma, so you don't notice him turn into Mr. Panda.' "

"You mean you hadn't cured your own curse by the time little Nodoka came back? Even though Ranma had already lost his curse, and the Amazons had a cure for you too?" Happosai shook his head. "What were you holding out for, anyway? Somebody with the kind of magic to cure you by separating your selves, so there'd always be one Genma who could sit around on his furry butt doing nothing?"

"No," Genma grumbled. "For your information, I was holdin' out for winter, when Ranma an' Akane an' I would take a trip back to Jusenkyo. Get my own cure, or maybe a curse to match the boy's. Either way wouldn't be racking up more debt to the old woman or her too too cute li'l granddaughter." He heaved a sigh. "That's the first plan, anyway. More stuff happened, an' then Ranma was gettin' Shampoo to call in some Drowned Man water for Ryoga, with more left over for me."

"You say that like it isn't a good thing," Happosai observed.

"It's not!" Genma exclaimed. "At least, not then. Wasn't any kind of hurry like that. I was gonna spill my share of it when the time came to use it. After all, the boy's had so many cures slip through his fingers, who'd've thought it wasn't just me paying those dues too? It woulda kept that nice winter trip going and not stuck me in any worse debt to them. But then Tendo an' me come running home to find Nodoka got there ahead of us." He heaved a sigh deep enough to vibrate the table. "So much for no kind of hurry," he said morosely.

"So how long has it been since Nodoka joined you at Tendo's place anyway?" Happosai wanted to know. "Just a few days ago, or long enough it's safe to say that since you've kept your neck this long it's probably sticking around for good?"

Genma's brow furrowed as he tried to parse that last sentence. After a few moments he gave up, in favor of answering Happosai's original question before the Master became... impatient. "Um, she's been here awhile now. Lessee... a month, I think, maybe a little more."

"And she's getting along with everyone? Not disappointed in Ranma, is she? Or even with you?"

"Absolu'ly not!" Genma proclaimed proudly. "Ranma an' I did a damn good job making sure she never found out anything she couldn't afford to hear." Then he slumped. "The boy also did a real good job of making her happy with all the girls chasing after him. Too bad her idea of making it better is to have all of 'em catch him too."

"Well, at least your wife's got good taste in some areas," Happosai remarked with a smirk.

"Mm-hm," Genma said, a dreamy look in his eyes as he let himself be distracted by thoughts of Nodoka's cooking. The small corner of his mind still alert enough to realize that wasn't what the Master had meant, was also alert enough to welcome the distraction anyway.

Mildly disturbed by the sight of his drooling student, Happosai rapped his pipe against the table. It made a noise like a thunderclap, though no visible damage was done except to Genma's blissful distraction. "Focus, Genma. I'm not through talking here."

Genma blinked. "Um, sorry, what was the question I missed?"

"I _said_, Akane can't be happy about that," Happosai lied through his teeth. "About Nodoka wanting all the pretty ladies to have a piece of her son. Does that have anything to do with you training her seriously?"

"Maybe," Genma allowed after a few seconds of thought. "That's gotta be helping her keep motivated. But it's not why she wanted the training in the first place. That was before Nodoka." He paused, licking his lips, then said, "Master? All this talking is pretty thirsty work. Could I at least have one more beer?"

"Eh, sure," Happosai said generously. "Kenta! We want another three beers and a Master's Special Number Nine!"

"Thanks, Master," Genma said. Then he blinked. "Um... just which one of us is paying for all this?"

"We're not," Happosai said with a shrug. "I was already feeling generous one day about six months ago, and then that turned out to be the first day that Kenta really managed the kind of service I'd been training him for. Put me in a good enough mood to tell him how to hook up with a few special interest groups. They pay him triple his expenses for all the time he keeps me here, distracted and out of their hair."

Happosai took a swig out of one of his newly-arrived drinks, then gave Genma a shrewd look. "And speaking of distractions, and people who are out of hair, I can't help but feel you're trying to distract me from asking about you training Akane."

He'd expected a guilty flinch, and was mildly surprised when it didn't come. Genma was silent for a long time, sipping at his beer. "No, tha's not right," he said morosely, when he'd halfway emptied his glass. "I mean, I wasn't tryin' to hide anything from you in particular. It's just... I didn't want to think about this now. Me, personally, I mean. Didn't want to think about it."

"Tough. Why not?" Happosai prodded. "Exactly what was it you didn't want to think about?"

A few more seconds passed in silence... and then it was as if a floodgate opened. Happosai sat there in growing astonishment, listening to Genma relate a surprisingly coherent web of confusion, hopes, uncertainty, pride, deception, and triumph at least halfway Pyrrhic. Even adjusting for his student's tendency toward self-centeredness, Happosai was forced to admit one thing: it was a very impressive tangle Genma had gotten himself into.

"So that's the whole of it, then?" he said at last, just to make sure.

"Think so, yeah," Genma said. "Um... I said the part about Akane managing some real control over her aura, right?"

"Yep."

"And I told you that Ranma was proud, even without him knowin' how far I'm trying to take Akane?"

"Uh-huh."

"I said the part about how I started this whole thing for that, didn' I? For Ranma, to make him proud of me? But somewhere along the way I started caring a lot about doin' it right for Akane's sake too?"

"Yes, Genma," Happosai said, his patience beginning to wear thin. "Are you going to repeat everything all over again now?"

"Um... just trying to make sure I didn' leave nothing out, Master," Genma said, not wanting to admit that as quickly as he'd revealed each point in his original wandering account, it had passed equally quickly out of his mind. The whole of the situation was simply too complex for his current condition; he could just about keep one copy of it in his head at the moment, but not a bunch of tags for all the plot points to tell him what he'd already told the Master.

"Tell you what. I'll ask you a few questions, see if that jogs any more details loose." Happosai paused for a few thoughtful drags on his pipe, then said, "Just how much progress has she made in controlling her aura?"

"She can keep it up an' out while she's moving around attackin' or defendin', strong enough to make it damned hard to connect through it with a shiatsu hit," Genma said. "Course, she's not so good at her burn rate yet. Right now it only takes half an hour to empty her reserves, even though I got them aboutta thousand percent better than they were three months ago."

"But she'll learn that control while practicing the trick you've already managed to teach her," Happosai said. "And the ones you've still got up your sleeve." When Genma's head wobbled in a movement that seemed to be trying to be 'yes' and 'no' at the same time, Happi moved on to his next question. "And now that it's way, waaayyyy too late, you're starting to have some second thoughts about all this? Something about how Ranma will react? I'll admit I didn't quite follow that bit of the story." He snorted. "It might have been because you sucked at explaining it."

"Sorry, Master. It's... complicated. Not even sure I understand it myself." Genma heaved a sigh. "You 'member what I said before, right? About makin' Ranma proud of me, of makin' him want to learn from me again, when he saw what I did with someone as weak as Akane?"

"Yes. It was surprisingly well-thought-out, Genma. I doubt you came up with this plan in a bar," Happosai sniped. "I'm still not sure why you're doubting it now." Perhaps simply because it _was_ a good plan, the ancient lecher mused.

"It's... it's like I said. I was gonna get Akane to where she could get one surprise win in, blow Shampoo away. Hah. Blow away," Genma repeated bitterly. "That woulda been impressive, all right. Would've shown my boy that his old man still had a few good tricks left to teach him."

Deciding that the situation warranted one of his rare acts of charity, Happosai sighed and said plainly, "Genma, I'm sure it still will. I know you're worried about Ranma ditching Akane in favor of a girl who'll give him some, but just because your son's finally showing good sense doesn't mean he'll flip out if you give Akane a chance for one sneaky win against Shampoo."

"She won't win," Genma said glumly. "I'm sure of it. She can pull out all the stops, maybe put up a halfway decent fight. But unless she throws everything into a knockout blow in that first second of the fight when Shampoo's surprised to see Akane usin' her chi, she's got no chance. I can't train her fast enough to get ahead. I prob'ly can't even train her fast enough to teach her that much true Anything Goes, to make her settle for the cheap quick KO."

"Genma, I'm just not following you here. Why would aura techniques only be enough if she struck in that one second when Shampoo was shocked to see them?" Happi put on a stare so menacing that it would have been over-the-top had his student been sober. "There's something you're not telling me," he said in a similar tone of voice. "I suggest you fix that."

"Ah... ah..." Genma gabbled, trying desperately to figure out where the problem was. "Ah... ah... Air style! I didn' mention the Air Style!!" When Happosai blinked and gave an involuntary nod, Genma's heart receded at least slightly out of his throat. "I dunno how much the old ghoul's taught her yet, but she's the one passing it on to Ranma. And he's already got two incredible moves down!"

Happosai blinked several more times. "Yeah, that's a pretty big piece you left out of your original picture, Genma m'boy. Are you telling me Cologne's handing out one of the elemental styles?!"

"To Shampoo," Genma said, having calmed the rest of the way down to glum. "And she's teaching my son." He heaved a long and weary sigh. "So much for showing Ranma that I'm still the best one for him to come an' learn from."

"Genma..." Happosai said, not merely gently for him, but gently for a normal person. The incongruity was enough to send Genma's head jerking up from its slump to stare at the Grandmaster. "That's not what you were trying to show him. You wanted him to know you still had worthwhile things to teach, not that you were the one and only person to go to. Anything Goes, remember?"

"I... I guess..." Genma said uncertainly.

"Good!" the ancient lecher said briskly, all traces of gentleness forgotten. "Because that little bit of soft treatment I just handed you cost every bit of the credit you've earned lately! It'll be a long, long time before you earn another one like that from me!"

To Genma, even that was good news of a sort. It sounded like the Master had just said there were ways to earn his favor that weren't morally reprehensible. If there had ever been any sign of that before now, his disciples must have missed it while blinking.

Determined not to push his luck, the elder Saotome asked cautiously, "So you don't wanna hear anything more from me now?"

"Hmmm. No, I'm still curious," Happosai replied. "For one thing, I'm still not following why you'd have second thoughts about training Akane. So she won't beat Shampoo. So what? You said it yourself—you started out just wanting to teach her one big impressive move to make Ranma proud of you, but you actually got something better than that. He's already proud of what you've done, filling the holes in her fundamentals. You also said you were proud of that yourself, as well as proud of getting her ready for the advanced stuff. So where exactly are the second thoughts coming in?"

Genma shrugged helplessly, and took a deep gulp from the last beer remaining on the table. "It's complicated," he said again. "I mean, Akane first came to me for trainin' cause she wanted to beat Shampoo for real. An' I told her she'd be able to. Up until jus' a little while ago, when Ranma told me that stuff about the Air style, I still thought I could make good on that."

Happosai stared at his student, his expression shifting from disbelief to mild disgust. "Don't tell me you're having a fit of _conscience_, Genma! Don't tell me you can't suck it up and use a good old-fashioned false pretense to keep your student pushing forward and making real progress!"

"Okay, I won't," Genma said, his plaintive tone making it clear that this was nonetheless the case.

"Oh, well, I'm glad that's not it then. What _is_ the problem?" Happosai said sadistically.

Genma just whimpered and screwed his eyes shut.

"Don't give me that pathetic pose!" Happosai snapped. "I heard _exactly_ what you were saying! You found the perfect lever to get your student pushing herself hard enough for real, remarkable growth, and just because it turns out to depend on a lie suddenly you're getting all lily-livered and chicken-hearted about using it? What the hell is wrong with you?!" He paused, calming down as he reminded himself that despite this little failure Genma was still doing a lot better now than he used to. In a milder tone he continued, "Seriously, Genma, I trained you better than that. Hell, _you_ have trained _Ranma_ better than that too. What's the problem now?"

"Ah, Master... she... that is..." Genma scraped together his courage, and said, "Of course I'm treating Akane's training different. She's a girl! And, and everybody knows you've got to treat girls more gently than guys... I know how you trained me, an' how I trained my boy, but I can't just repeat that same stuff now. Tomboy or no tomboy I gotta do things different..."

It slowly dawned on the Anything Goes Grandmaster that—despite Genma's handicaps of being less intelligent than a focused, centered Happosai and fairly drunk to boot—his disciple had managed to win this round. It was true that girls would need much more delicate treatment than boys in something as fierce as Anything Goes; that was one reason Happi had never taken a female student. Possibly this particular instance was one place where such a student should receive the same treatment as a male, but it certainly wasn't something that could be safely assumed. Genma was right to think it needed careful thought, and he, Happosai, had been wrong.

As the ancient lecher toyed with the thought of bouncing his disciple around the room like a beach ball, Genma sighed and spoke again. "That's not the only problem, either. Okay, let's say it's wrong to let her keep thinking she's got a chance. It'd be just as wrong or wronger to quit training her at all! Ranma's proud, I'm proud, Akane's getting to where she needs to be. I can't cut out on that now! And..." His voice faltering, he continued, "and if I tell her... if I tell her what Ranma told me, about the training Shampoo's getting, what she can do... I could do that. I could tell her, and that way I could convince her to fight the right way. To strike all at once while Shampoo's picking her jaw up off the floor at Akane Tendo able to manage something like this. But... but Ranma..."

It wasn't too hard for Happosai to follow this aborted train of thought. _'Yeah, if he's got real feelings for Shampoo, that probably would piss him the hell off,'_ he conceded. _'In fact, I can't believe Genma's even considering it.'_ After mulling over that for a few moments, he said, "Genma, it almost sounds like you're thinking about risking Ranma's goodwill because you don't want to lose what you've gained from Akane. Am I hearing you right? Is that how far you've come with her as your student? Would you really go that much farther?"

Genma's answer was a long, low, hollow groan that seemed to rise from the very soles of his feet. "I don' want that. There's gotta be a way," he mumbled. "Gotta be a way to squirm between those two rocky hard places." His beady, bloodshot eyes suddenly riveted on Happosai. "Master, please! Please help me! I'm not good enough to wiggle my way through this. Is there any way? Any advanced Anything Goes principle to help out a poor, struggling, good-hearted father and sensei here?"

"Give me a minute to think about it," Happosai said, conveniently overlooking the statement he'd made not ten minutes past about his disciple not getting any more soft, tender treatment. After all, if he spun this right, perhaps he could bring Genma farther down the true path of Anything Goes.

Several minutes passed in quiet thought. Happosai considered and discarded four ideas before the one true, perfect plan hit him like a blaze of lightning. "I've got it!" he cried, jumping up to stand on the table and puff his chest out with pride. "The solution to everything. The problems you were wondering about just now and the ones you told me about earlier to boot!"

"R- Really, Master?" Genma said, sober enough to be skeptical, drunk enough to hope anyway.

"Absolutely!" Happosai proclaimed. "I just had to think outside the box a little. You know, that kind of no-limits strategy that Anything Goes is supposed to be all about."

"That's why you're still the Grandmaster, even though Ranma kicked your butt a few times," Genma said, the alcohol muddling him just enough to let the comment register as flattery.

"I'll overlook that little remark for now," Happosai said generously. "Anyway, Genma, like I said it's very simple." He held out one hand and began ticking points off using his fingers. "Nowadays Ranma is getting along much better with Shampoo than Akane. Nodoka thinks it's manly for one guy to seduce a bunch of girls. Akane will never, ever agree to share Ranma with Shampoo; there's just too much bad blood. She's nowhere near ready to tell Ranma she wants him, or trust him, or put out for him, or any of that good stuff, but she at least cares enough to seethe with jealousy. Which is the biggest part of why she's so determined to beat Shampoo in a fight." He paused, giving Genma a meaningful look. "I could go on, but I'm getting bored here. Have you seen the solution yet?"

"Don't have a clue," Genma admitted. "You... you wouldn't joke with me, would you Master? Not about something like this."

"Certainly not about something like this!" Happi reassured him. "What you need to do is perfectly simple, and it sounds like you've already made a good start you can build on." He indulged in one last dramatic pause, taking a drag on his pipe and puffing out a cloud of smoke. This time Genma didn't watch the shape it formed, which for his peace of mind was probably just as well.

"Seduce her, Genma," the Grandmaster said bluntly. "Take Akane as a mistress. Unless you've completely screwed up with all the stuff you've been telling me, that's a heck of a lot likelier to work than getting her and Ranma back together. You might have to spin it a little for Nodoka, but I bet all you'd have to do is say you were freeing up space for someone who _really_ loved Ranma and she'd be thrilled. Not to mention proud of you.

"Ranma would be irritated, I'm sure, but that wouldn't last much longer than it took him to realize the leash was off for good. He'd even thank you eventually, I'd wager. And on the off chance that he still cares too much for Akane to let her go, you'd find out really quickly this way. Hell, I'd even be willing to buy you some insurance—I'll draw the boy off, let him chase me across the city and 'catch' me, give him a beat-down like he's never had in his life, and then while he's too out of it to lie I'll find out how he feels about Shampoo versus Akane.

"Getting back to that subject, this would give you all the leverage you need to motivate Akane to train without focusing on beating Shampoo. And as for Akane _as_ Akane, not just your student... well, just think about it! She'll be a tough nut to crack, but oh so worth it!" Happosai paused to wipe away a strand of drool with a convenient napkin.

"Master, you can't be serious!" Genma shouted, finally finding his voice. "I... I couldn't ever... there's no way I could...!"

"Of course not, by yourself," Happosai said, waving his pipe airily as if to dismiss the problem as quickly as he'd acknowledged it. "But fear not! I'm here to help you, Genma m'boy. Like I already said I would, by checking first to make sure you didn't misread everything with your son. Once that coast is clear I can give you a few coaching sessions, a few pieces of hard-earned wisdom... and..." He closed one eye, giving the single scariest wink that had ever been seen in this bar. "And a few extra-special moxibustion treatments, to get the both of you hot enough to seal the deal!"

Genma stood up with such speed and force that his chair rocketed backwards to shatter against the far wall. "NOW YOU SEE ME, NOW YOU DON'T!!" he screamed, his aura blazing momentarily around him.

The few remaining patrons that hadn't been openly staring at the Anything Goes table abandoned their pretense now, joining the rest in watching with wide-eyed interest. They were mildly disappointed at the sight of the portly man-turned-panda dashing through the window he'd already broken; most had hoped for a hole to be knocked in a wall this time.

Happosai, by contrast, just shook his head, being careful to keep one eye on a spot of apparently empty air throughout the process. After a few seconds had ticked by, he said, "Genma, I can still feel the traces of the aura cloaking you there, even if you did get them slightly less obvious this time." Then he frowned. "And I'm impressed that you're managing to make them even less obvious, but it's time to—" The ancient lecher cut himself off, eyes widening, and sent a spike of his own aura surging forward into the fading traces of Genma's cloaking field.

"Son of a snake-oil salesman!" Happi blurted as his offensive utterly failed to reveal a cowering Genma. "He actually reversed the trick! He dumped a bunch of hidden aura there and ran out while I kept my eyes on the _invisible decoy!_ How the _hell_ did he manage something like that, as drunk as he was?!" he demanded of the heavens at large.

"Fear is a powerful motivator," Kenta murmured behind the counter, unfortunately not quite quietly enough.

-----------------------

The Chariot of the Storm was not a technique designed for stealth. But then again, Cologne had broken more important rules than that one lately.

The air whispered and hummed around her, held tightly under the Matriarch's control. The tiny vortex, only large enough to carry her, held her aloft at nearly two thousand feet. She had sailed up, up, and away from the Cat Café rooftop twenty minutes ago, and ridden the winds out of Nerima itself. Greater Tokyo sprawled beneath her now, and Cologne took a moment to reflect on the sight. It didn't look any more peaceful than Nerima did from this vantage point... or rather, Nerima looked no less tranquil.

The thought of deceptive appearances brought her thoughts back to a sheet of paper, folded safely in one of the subspace pockets of her robe. On the surface, the paper appeared perfectly innocent: a request for her company this evening at a certain Tokyo bar. The first disturbing sign wasn't what was there, but what wasn't: the sender's name. Even when Cologne turned the full force of her scrutiny against it the wording hadn't seemed all that ominous. But a certain turn of phrase here, a tell-tale sentence structure there, had shown subtle but unmistakable signs.

The letter had been written by a martial artist. There wasn't _quite_ enough evidence for her to conclude it was effectively a challenge letter, but there certainly wasn't enough to discount that possibility either. There were precious few people in the world who could face her on an even footing, but the tier of those who might think they had a chance if they could lure her in and take her by surprise was significantly larger (especially since Cologne wasn't ruling out those who were wrong in thinking that).

_' Of course, it might all be perfectly innocent, '_ she speculated. _' It could be someone who's heard of me and is thinking about begging a few lessons, but wants to meet me first and get more information. '_ The Matriarch rolled her eyes. _' After all, as long as I've been here I haven't seen any newcomer act even half that sensibly. Surely that means we're due. '_

It would be nice if she were on her way to meet some clear-headed prospective student who would show her the respect her skills demanded, who'd be ready and open and receptive to learning. It would be satisfying to find some worthy pupil she could teach without having to consider ten thousand different ways it might eventually cause trouble for her long-term plans. It would be a positively wonderful explanation for the letter, a marvelous surprise. Cologne wouldn't have considered it for a moment if the meeting had been set in Nerima.

Even without that, though, she thought it far more probable that she was heading into a trap. The Matriarch ran a few of the likelier suspects through her mind. _' It could be Fang Zhang, '_ Cologne thought half-heartedly_. ' His last challenge was only twelve years ago, but he doesn't usually wait longer than twenty. '_ She hoped it wasn't a challenge from Fang, as that would mean she'd already wasted significant time, effort, and thought. Fang Zhang—or 'Fuzzy' as she'd thought of him ever since learning enough English to reduce his name to its initials—was living proof that one could get good enough at martial arts to dramatically lengthen a lifespan without necessarily being good at martial arts.

_' Then again, it might not be a trap or challenge at all, ' _she mused. _' Or at least whoever sent it might not think so. I swear, if this is Jade Lotus trying one more time to convince me to bend the rules and let one of her no-talent grandchildren into the tribe as a Warrior without passing the Warrior's tests... '_ For a moment Cologne fantasized about telling 'Jade Lotus', a.k.a. Kikuko Sakuraba, that she would consider it if one of the woman's grandsons—all of whom were kind, handsome, and as utterly unwarlike as the woman herself and the rest of her brood—managed to seduce one Akane Tendo. As always, she discarded the notion. There were much better ways to deal with the difficulties posed by Akane than putting Ranma in that kind of competition.

On the whole, the Matriarch was finding the idea of a true, life-or-death struggle looking better and better. _' It could be that fool of a half-Oni Lin. Since the first sixteen times I squashed her weren't enough to get through to her, I don't see why number seventeen eight months ago would have done the trick. '_ Admittedly the letter wasn't in Lin's handwriting and all her other challenges had been more straightforward than this... but each time the half-Oni had made some minor or major change in her tactics. This could just be the next ploy in the long, long line.

On the other hand, Cologne thought hopefully, it could be someone she'd never even heard of before, much less had a history with. _' Perhaps those fools on the Nerima town council finally noticed how much property I've purchased over the last year. '_ She had done most of the buying through middlemen, but she hadn't gone farther than that to hide her identity. _' If they did finally notice, then they might also figure out that I'm seriously considering founding a true Joketsuzoku outpost in Nerima. '_ It was a small step from there to the councilmen blowing their next ten years' budget to hire someone they thought might be able to run her out of town. Yes, that series of possibilities all held together logically enough... if she ignored the fact that the council members were, by and large, on a mental par with Soun Tendo.

She was nearly at her destination now. The Matriarch dropped her speculations and released her hold on the Air technique, utilizing another to float silently down to a perfect one-point landing on the rooftop next door. She'd made sure to arrive a few minutes early, which gave her time to study the place. Knowing that a true challenge for her might be waiting inside, Cologne restricted herself to passive observation. Actively using her chi senses to probe the interior would certainly have given her more information on the general public therein, but if a Master or Grandmaster was lurking inside and keeping himself hidden, she'd be giving more away than she'd get.

Even limiting herself that way, Cologne was able to gather plenty of information on what could become her first real battleground in months. The Matriarch quickly found herself hoping it wouldn't be. The bar was dingy and low-quality, set in an equally poor neighborhood. The large window that faced the street had recently been replaced, but bore no signs of having been washed in the week since that happened. A sign in that window warned potential customers that if they chose to come here, they needed to be ready for anything. Nevertheless, the bar was full of customers, and despite the unpleasant environment, they seemed to be harmless salarymen and mostly-harmless laborers. If there were any Yakuza or other seriously corrupted types in there, Cologne couldn't sense them.

She'd picked up no trace of any Master or Grandmaster, though that didn't necessarily rule them out. On the other hand, she _had_ eliminated Fuzzy and Jade Lotus as possibilities, and there were one or two low-level martial artists who might possibly fit the first scenario she'd considered. It was therefore with a cautious smile on her face that Cologne dropped down to street level, opened the door, and entered the bar.

The bartender took one look at her, let out a screech like the wail of the damned, and fainted dead away.

_' Well, that's not a good sign, '_ she thought, shifting into 'serious threat assessment' mode. An equally poor sign was the way every customer in the bar was staring at her. None of them showed the horror that the bartender had so briefly evidenced, but all were wary at least. Despite the level of reaction, none of them showed any true recognition of her, which further puzzled Cologne. It was as if they'd simply cued in on her extreme age and utter lack of the debilitation that said age usually brought.

That first moment of open staring had passed now. People were turning back to their drinks, keeping only as much of their focus on her as they could without being obvious about it. The serving girl, moving as quickly as anyone present had ever seen, marched back behind the long bar and slapped the weedy little man awake, hissing "No way in _hell_ am I handling this by myself!" into his ear. And, Cologne noticed, the crowd even seemed to be inviting her to sit down. Space was opening up around an empty table, one that had already had a larger gap around it than usual. Even as she watched, the average distance separating tables was reduced by a good six inches, in order to shunt all the surplus space into the gap around this one. Cologne couldn't help but notice that this table was different from all the others in another way: it had a stool pulled up next to it that was the perfect height for someone her age.

The situation was drawing her nerves tight with tension. Nevertheless, she decided to play along just a bit longer. Slowly but steadily, she walked over to the stool, giving no hint that she was anything other than perfectly at her ease. She reached the stool and used her staff to nudge it slightly away from the table, for simplicity of mounting.

She just had time to recognize the presence of slightly more weight than the stool itself could account for. Then Happosai was popping into existence atop it from out of thin air, grinning widely at her with a cheery, leery, "Hello, hot stuff!"

And Cologne—Matriarch of the Joketsuzoku, Grandmaster of Amazonian Wu Shu, three-hundred-year-old veteran of battles that would have left her 'son-in-law' a gibbering mess—squealed like a little girl, forgot all discipline, and swung her staff with pure feminine instinct.

-----------------------

"I still say you had no business hitting me that hard," Happosai grumbled, rubbing the large knot on his head. A cool breeze flowed into the room through the new Happi-sized hole in the wall, which helped ease the pain.

"I still say you should have dodged," Cologne snapped back. She was seated now on a second stool, across from the Anything Goes Grandmaster.

"How could I?" he returned. "I wasn't actually looking at you. Couldn't be, not if I wanted to say that 'hot stuff' line with a straight face."

Cologne's grip tightened around her staff, but she opted not to take it further than that. The bar might be full of fools, but she didn't want any of them on her conscience if they wound up as collateral damage. She wasn't going to be the one to start a fight. And, general obnoxiousness aside, it didn't look like Happosai intended to do so either. "So why did you invite me here anyway?" She pulled out the letter. "This wasn't meant to be a challenge at all, was it?"

"Of course not!" he scoffed. Then he grinned. "But we can have a drinking contest if you like, Cologne. Loser pays the tab." Since Kenta would get paid triple anyway, that extra income should help settle his ruffled feathers. And Happosai had no intention of losing.

Cologne returned a level stare. "Didn't the last time you got drunk end up with you stuck in a cave for more than ten years?"

"Of course not!"

The Matriarch sighed. "Happi, there's nobody here to posture for. I know it's an old person's prerogative to remember the past more fondly than it actually happened, but there are limits."

Happosai snorted. "That's not what I meant, you fossilized old stick-in-the-mud. I've been drunk plenty of times since I got out of that cave."

"Right. What was I thinking?" she muttered. "Anyway, no thank you. I suspect we've got more important things to deal with, things we should both be at our best and brightest for." She snorted. "Or at least, I should. Feel free to get wasted if you like."

"Kenta!" Happosai called. "Bring me a Master's Special Number Twenty-Eight!" Getting Genma drunk enough to spill answers freely had been child's play. If he could accomplish the same thing with Cologne... well, that would be a victory Happosai would carry down through however many centuries he had left, wrapping it around him like a warm, satisfying blanket. If his version of the Parlay du Fois Gras was enough to pull that off, he thought with a mental chortle, then it would be worth all the pain and strain Ranma had endured to learn the technique.

A few moments later, Cologne stared in shock and awe at the spectacle that was the Master's Special Number Twenty-Eight. The table groaned beneath the weight of the tray and its contents. Not even Happosai could possibly slug down that much alcohol and remain conscious; the Matriarch was sure of it. The fumes alone were potent enough that she thought she felt a faint buzz. She reached into the pocket that stored various medical and preventative items, pulled out a herbal-infused cloth facemask, and affixed it, missing Happosai's wince as she did so.

"I'm a little curious about this bar, Happi," she said, deciding that if he wasn't ready to get down to brass tacks then she might as well satisfy her own curiosity. "The place is frankly a dump, and yet it's full of customers. And relatively decent, honest customers at that." She paused, staring at his tray of drinks with a jaundiced eye. "I was also going to ask why you came here, but that doesn't seem like such a hard question anymore."

"Hey, I'll have you know it took plenty of blood, sweat, and tears to get that punk Kenta trained well enough for this kind of service," he shot back.

Cologne didn't bother to ask who had shed those bodily fluids. "Why go to that much effort?" the Matriarch asked instead. She turned and peered at Kenta for a few moments, feeling mildly guilty at the distress her scrutiny was obviously causing the man. "Did you think you saw some hidden depths to him? He doesn't look like much of a diamond in the rough to me."

"Nah, it was just a whim," the Anything Goes Grandmaster answered. He'd pulled out and lit his pipe while Cologne's attentions were away, and now took a few puffs on it. "It was a pain to pound competence into somebody who was such a stranger to it. Still, after putting up with Soun and Genma this was nothing."

Cologne noticed that whatever vile blend of tobacco Happosai was smoking was much more powerful than normal. The smoke was beginning to corrode her face mask. She was silent for a few moments, considering what to do, and trying not to picture what his lungs must look like. At length, she bled the barest fraction of her aura into the space surrounding her head, synchronized it with the air, and created a shield against foreign substances. In the past, she'd always been as leery of showing her real capabilities to Happosai as he was to her, but things were different now. This encounter was going to have to clear the air between them, in more ways than one.

Happosai held back a sigh of disappointment, recognizing the time to abandon a failed plan. Oh, well, he probably didn't need an advantage like a drunken adversary in this meeting anyway. Cologne was reasonable most of the time, whereas he almost never was; that meant that when he decided to be reasonable it inevitably gave him a big advantage because the reasonable folks didn't want to ruin the unexpectedly smooth road. "Anyway, didn't you ask why there were so many people here? That's also because of me," he bragged. "Since he's got me for a patron, Kenta can afford to keep his prices rock-bottom. The dinginess of the place and the usual poor service aren't about to stop people from coming, not when they only pay a quarter of what they usually would." By making sure the bar was always filled to capacity, Kenta made the maximum profit possible on Happosai's triple-the-expenses payoff visits. Happi also suspected that the bartender felt safer with so many other people between him and his most illustrious client.

"And I suppose at least some of the regulars come to watch the occasional show," Cologne theorized.

"Yep." Happosai lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "There's even a couple of wide-eyed, wet-behind-the-ears, little-kid-in-water-wings-splashing-around-in-the-shallow-end excuses for martial artists that hang out here. Hah, you should have seen how big one guy's eyes got the first time he saw me in action. He had no _idea_ what kind of stuff a real Master could pull off. Sooner or later one of them is bound to work up the guts to ask me for a few pointers. It'd be a good joke on Ranma to drop a new Anything Goes student on him a few years from now, someone trained by me to challenge him for his unofficial place as heir to the school."

"It would be a joke, all right," Cologne mused, envisioning how powerful Ranma would be in another few years. "I'm not so sure who the joke would be on, though."

"Now why would you say that?" he asked innocently. "C'mon, you know as well as I do that Ranma's been mostly reactive since he settled down at Tendo's. The new stuff he's learned, he learned because there was something staring him right in the face that called for it."

"Actually, you're wrong," she replied. "That's only true for his special techniques. The Amaguriken, the Hiryu Shoten Ha, the Moko Takabisha... all of them happened like that, while he mainly just focused on basic training." Then she narrowed her eyes. "But Ranma is right on the threshold of a transition. He's hovering at the very line between two zones, hasn't quite left behind the point where focusing on the basics of physical control is better than cramming in as many special techniques as possible. You know that as well as I do."

"No, I know that's what _you_ think," he riposted. "Me, I figured months ago that it was time for him to sink his teeth into his first real chi technique. And I'm not talking about some glorified basic hand-to-hand move either; I mean something with a lot of power, with plenty of room for development and revision, good for using against just one person or several at a time." He winked at her.

Cologne declined to consider the possibility that she'd been manipulated into teaching Ranma the Hiryu Shoten Ha. _'If he's telling any truth at all there, it probably just meant that he had some idea of his own, some test he'd give Ranma before undoing the Ultimate Weakness Moxibustion. Ha, the old fool was likely taking a leaf out of my book, copying the tactic I led off with when I first got here.'_ At least, she hoped that was it.

"In any case, none of that goes against my original point," she said briskly. "A few years from now, Ranma will certainly be too strong for someone with just those few years of real training to get any kind of win at all."

"You think so?" Happosai asked, even more innocently than he'd posed his last question. "Even if I found someone with a real affinity for the element of Earth, and focused everything on getting him as good with that style as I could?"

"And that sounds like our cue to get serious," she said.

"Yeah, probably," he admitted, sounding disappointed at the prospect.

Cologne didn't know whether this emotion was real or not, unlike his earlier 'innocence'. A normal person certainly wouldn't have minded the conversation turning to the very point for which he had called the meeting, but Happosai was anything but normal.

Before she could say anything, he was speaking again. "I suppose Shampoo told you a week ago that I was back in town. Right?"

"Not exactly," she answered. "She told me you called to place an order, but she also said you almost didn't bother to disguise your voice at all." The Matriarch snorted. "She was certain you'd been making a prank call from Kyoto or wherever." Shampoo had been making progress in learning not to believe something just because she wanted it to be true, but there was still plenty of room for improvement on that front. "I wasn't so optimistic, of course. But I'll admit I was surprised not to see any sign of you in the days that passed since then. I was almost starting to think she might have been right."

"Nah. I've been in Nerima the whole time, laying low and getting a good look at how much everything's changed lately. Can't say I'm happy about a lot of it," the ancient lecher said ruefully. "But at least there's some good mixed in with the bad."

_'What? No temper tantrum about the loss of Ranma's girl form? I know he likes to be unpredictable when it really counts, but... Well, no sense in providing him too easy an opening.'_ Cologne said nothing, merely looked expectantly at him and waited for him to go on.

"Aren't you going to ask me how I kept anyone from noticing me for so long?" Happosai said with a pout. "Or what ticked me off, or what I thought was good news?"

_'I might have known he wouldn't cooperate that easily.'_ "I assumed you stayed hidden with the technique you so graciously demonstrated to me earlier," Cologne returned. "It's a very impressive concealment technique, Happi, I'll give you that. And I'm even more impressed that Son-in-law hasn't suffered a rash of unexplained freak accidents this week."

"It doesn't work that way," he explained. "When you're cloaked like that, you can't attack, or really interact with the world at all. It disrupts the effect."

"Hmmm." Her eyes narrowed. "Sounds like a technique you developed just to let you peek in the public baths."

"Wrong!" he proclaimed. It had actually been his old buddy Chingensai who developed it for that. Although Happosai had gladly taken Chingensai's basic Now You See Me, Now You Don't and refined it further to create his Dimensional Warp.

"...And that's all you're going to say about that, I take it?" Cologne asked after a few moments of silence.

"Well, maybe not," Happosai allowed. "Off and on over the past week, I've been working on a revision to it. A version that still leaves you cloaked to normal sight and gives a little protection against chi senses, while letting you split your aura for attacks or distraction effects or whatever."

"Mmmm. Why are you telling me this?" she asked. "We've never been enemies, but we've certainly never been on the 'sharing secrets' level either."

"Not the 'sharing secrets of the Art' level, you mean," Happosai said with a leer that brought back unsettled memories of their first encounter all those centuries ago.

_'You want to play rough? Okay, you old fool, we'll play rough.'_ Cologne forced a simper. "Oh, Happi, you're trying to _impress_ me! I thought you saved that for the younger, less experienced girls!" Her coquettish giggle turned seamlessly into a cackle at the ancient lecher's reaction. It wasn't everyday you saw someone stagger backward when they were sitting down.

From his new spot on the floor, Happosai let out a grumbling string of oaths. He set his stool upright once more, jumped back to the top, grabbed the most potent drink on his mostly-untouched tray, and slammed it down in one go. "Okay, I'll be serious if you will. What I was _getting_ at is, I didn't just decide out of the blue to modify the technique like that. I had inspiration."

"Inspiration? From who?"

"From Genma, believe it or not. He's already developed that on his own," Happosai admitted. "I could have just made him teach it to me instead of figuring it out from the two times he used it to try and get away," no need to admit that the second time had been successful, "but the way I see it, that would have made things more complicated than you want them to be."

"Than I want them to be?" Cologne echoed. "I'm not following you, Happi."

"It's why I asked you to meet me here," the Anything Goes Grandmaster explained. "I wanted to make a deal with you." He paused for dramatic effect, as well as to let the old biddy get any sarcastic comments about deals with the devil off her chest.

Feeling mildly gratified when she didn't take advantage of the opening, he continued, "I've been doing a lot of thinking this week, while I watched everything that was going on. If this was just another scramble between the girls who are after Ranma's hide, and other body parts, I'd be glad to jump in and have fun with it. But..." He sighed. "But with Nodoka in the picture... well, that changes things. You know what's at stake there as well as I do. Even if Genma hadn't made that dumb-ass promise, there'd still be the question of a mother's love and pride and acceptance in her only child. As much fun as it would be to bounce back into the action and ride herd on that little punk, kick him around town every day for a month for getting rid of his old curse, I just can't find it in my heart to do that. Can't risk destroying what Nodoka and Ranma and even Genma are trying to build back up."

"All of that sounds good so far, Happi," Cologne said, her voice kindly but firm. "And I'm glad to hear it. But I haven't heard anything yet that needs a bargain between you and me."

"What, you thought that meant I couldn't do anything at all?" Happosai snorted. "Get real, Cologne. There's a reason I showed you how stealthy I can be, and told you that right now I'm interested in learning to do it even better. It'd be great training, to head back into town and keep my hand in the chaos, without letting Nodoka get a clue that I was there running roughshod over her precious little boy." He grinned nastily for a moment, then smoothed his features into his best 'reasonable' look. "But I'm willing to let that go. I'll leave Nerima and stay away for a couple of years, and not come back until things are pretty much settled in Ranma's life. Whatever choices he wants to make, I won't interfere or even be watching to see what they are. I'm sure you can see how helpful that would be for your own agenda." When the Matriarch nodded involuntarily, he grinned again and continued, "You just have to make it worth my while."

"Go on," she said, closing her eyes and bracing herself.

"Every bra and pair of panties you and Shampoo own, and triple that amount imported from the cuties back at the Amazon village." Lechery practically dripped from every syllable that oozed past Happosai's quivering lips.

Cologne shook with a shudder that nearly knocked her off her stool. Still with her eyes screwed shut, she forced two words through tight lips. "All right."

"...BWAHAHAHAHA!!!"

The Matriarch's eyes shot open. Happosai was rolling around in gales of laughter, though he barely retained enough control to remain on top of the stool. After a few frozen moments of shock, she put on her best glare of death. "You weren't serious at all, were you."

"I... ha ha... I was about... woo hoo hoo... about my side of the bargain." He got the last of his mirth under control. "But for yours, I'm gonna need something more serious than that."

Cologne hesitated for a moment, teetering between continuing a course she'd followed for so long and abruptly ending it. The words, "You mean, promise to keep on keeping quiet to my fellow Amazon Elders about your continued survival, so that they don't hunt you down and execute you?" rose at least three inches up from the pit of her gut toward her lips. But then she swallowed them, reminding herself that Happosai probably couldn't help being irritating. So far in this encounter he had still been more reasonable than she'd seen from him in ages. She didn't want to ruin that.

"Go on," she said at last, her tone as mild as ever it had been when addressing him.

"It's simple enough," Happosai said with a shrug and a gulp from a mildly luminescent drink. "I'm agreeing not to screw around with your hopes for Ranma. You have to promise me the same thing, for Genma."

"For Genma?" Cologne's eyebrows shot toward her hairline. "Are you planning to start seriously training him again?"

"Yeah, that's right." He paused for emphasis. "_I_ will be. You've already got one Saotome eating out of your wrinkly little hand, sucking down an elemental style. You and Ranma can do what you want together, but Genma is my disciple. That's why I'm making this deal with you."

"An offer I can't refuse, hmm?" Cologne muttered. She was silent for quite some time, considering the implications. "I've spent a lot of time lately, thinking about the changes Genma is going through and what the ramifications would be. I'll admit this one caught me by surprise, though." The Matriarch shook her head ruefully, no longer surprised by the way Nerima could serve up completely unexpected developments at any given moment. She spared a second to be thankful that she had never made Nabiki's mistake and deluded herself that she was in ultimate control of everything around her. "Let me get something straight here, though. You already said that for your part of the bargain, you'll stay completely out of the picture for a few years. Whatever you're planning with Genma, you won't be making a move on it until then, correct?"

"Yeah, probably," Happosai answered. "I haven't one hundred percent decided yet. I might give him a call from time to time, have him drag his carcass out of town so I can catch up with him." Or maybe not. What he saw no reason to tell Cologne was that he was planning to ask Chingensai to keep an eye on Genma and report his progress to Happosai. It wasn't like that would violate the spirit of his no-interference-with-Ranma agreement with the old crone, he reasoned; Chinny was just as fond of the ladies as Happi was, but the Ninja Grandmaster had always been focused more toward voyeurism than active duty. This had shaped his whole philosophy of the Art as well, leading to someone who basically wouldn't cause you any trouble if you didn't first trouble him. Happosai had always found it mildly sad, but it was fortunate for him now.

"And during those catch-up visits, you might also spend a little time giving him ideas on training Akane?" Cologne murmured, deciding to play one of her cards. "He's already teaching her advanced techniques, as you may have noticed. He was even beginning to feel a little conflicted about it. And yet, somehow, all that conflict and indecision vanished a week ago like that red drink down your gullet. I can't help noticing the timing involved, and thinking that it wasn't a coincidence."

"You're right about that," Happosai said, his expression darkening ever so faintly toward a frown. "We ran into each other in this very bar, in fact, and had a lot of catching up to do. That's why I snuck back to Nerima in the first place, instead of jumping in to make the big splash I'd been planning. I heard from Genma then about how he was training Akane, as well as how he was starting to have his doubts."

"And you resolved those doubts? I'm surprised, Happi. I'd never have expected Genma to listen to you on a question like that."

"Whaddaya mean, a question like that?" he protested. "Anything Goes is my school! Why _shouldn't_ that punk listen to me?"

Cologne snorted. "Because it wasn't just a matter of training or the Art, you degenerate gnome. There was a serious moral question there, or even more than one I suppose. After all, not only is Genma training Akane in techniques more advanced than any he ever gave his own son, he's also basically giving significant power to someone who isn't, ultimately, trustworthy enough to receive it yet."

"Pshaw!" Happosai waved away both those concerns. "Neither of those were bothering him. He was feeling bad about lying to Akane, leading her along through this training with the promise that she'd be able to beat your little great-granddaughter. I got him over that easily enough."

"How, exactly?" Cologne asked, curious and vaguely apprehensive.

"Not exactly how I wanted," he admitted. "I gave that idiot the perfect solution, told him that if he seduced Akane and took her as a mistress everything would work out fine. That bipolar excuse for a conscience he's got wouldn't hear anything of it, though, wouldn't even _thank_ me for how I was going to help him make it a reality! No, that idiot just ran screaming, and after that he decided his 'noble sacrifice' in defying his Master for Akane's sake more than balanced out any guilt from lying to her about passing Shampoo!" The Anything Goes Grandmaster shook his head. Whenever he thought about that situation, he always felt a little dizzy. Disappointment and satisfaction at Genma's reaction twisted and coiled through each other so convolutedly that Happi couldn't decide which was stronger.

_'That was his idea on how to resolve things?! It might have worked, but still...'_ Cologne muttered an old Swahilian wives' proverb under her breath about the foibles of men.

Happosai considered asking for a translation, then decided her tone had told him all he needed to know. "So the long and short of it is, Genma's doing better now than he ever has before. As far as Anything Goes, I mean. Heck, from what he mumbled about letting Ranma make his own choice, he might be doing better as a father too." He probably wasn't telling Cologne anything she didn't already know, but hearing it again now would only make it plainer to the old girl that she needed to take him up on his offer. This was the best chance she and her great-granddaughter had ever had, after all; they really didn't need any chaotic factors jumping in to stir the mixture. "Seems like he's not so tied up in that promise he and Tendo made anymore."

Cologne considered her response for longer than Happosai had expected. After a good thirty seconds had passed, he cleared his throat, then said, "Did you honestly not know that already?"

"Oh, I knew it all right," she replied. "Just wondering if I ought to share a particular piece of information with you in return."

The fact that she'd said it like that meant that she'd already decided to do so. Happosai knew this, but played along anyway. "What? Huh? What is it? Tell me tell me tell me!" he pleaded, bouncing up and down on his seat.

"All right already! Settle down!" Cologne snapped. Trust Happi to ruin the drama of the moment. She paused for a few seconds longer, reclaiming as much of it as she could, then said, "Are you familiar with a magical principle called the One Oath of the Forsworn?"

He blinked. "Ah, no. Can't say that I am."

"Good. It's unpleasant stuff," she replied. "What it boils down to is this. Take one person who habitually makes promises he doesn't intend to keep and breaks them as soon as it's convenient. Then have him make one true promise, one that he would give his all to fulfill. And finally, let that promise be one that can easily be twisted to run counter to the natural harmony of the universe, one with a good chance to bring chaos, pain, and disorder if it's kept. When that happens, dark forces empower that promise, backing it up, twisting fate in an effort to bring it to their kind of fulfillment—a fulfillment that inevitably leads to pain and destruction for everyone involved. And the one who made the promise always, _always_ receives the worst of it."

It was Happosai's turn to sit quietly and think things over. "Waaaait a second," he said, spotting the catch. "You just said all that, but you didn't actually _say_ that was what's been happening here. You just let me think it." He shook his head, giving her a reproving smile. "You needed to tailor your story a little better if you wanted to fool me. Genma might be slippery, but he's not bad enough to call up something heavy-duty like that."

"No more is Soun Tendo," Cologne said evenly. "But together, with their promise to unite their families _no matter what_, they just barely qualified. Make no mistake, Happi, the effect I described was a very real part of life in this town until recently. I'd become suspicious," no need to mention that her suspicions hadn't been anywhere near this clear or specific, "and asked one of the mages in my family back home to investigate. Two months ago, I received word that she'd identified it and broken it."

The Anything Goes Grandmaster frowned. He knew Cologne wasn't above deceiving people, but unlike himself, she avoided outright lies. "I guess it would explain some of the things I've seen around here," he mused. "Hell, it's even a little reassuring. Maybe some of the ludicrous mistakes the kids have made weren't their fault, if their weak little minds were being pushed around by something like that. If it's that powerful, you and me and Chingensai are likely the only ones around here who could see through it or fight it off."

Cologne gave him a blood-curdlingly triumphant grin. "You think you weren't affected? I can remember at least three times when something like this would be the least embarrassing explanation for the mistakes you made."

Happosai's mouth dropped open to dangle in shock. He hitched it back shut, preparing to ask just what she thought she was talking about... when a little voice at the back of his head informed him that it would be much less embarrassing to figure it out for himself, rather than have Cologne proclaim it. He gritted his teeth and sped his brain up as fast as it would go, focusing everything on this unexpected train of thought.

A few silent moments later, he spoke again. "Yeah, yeah, enough about me already. What about you?" he challenged.

Cologne's grin just got wider and more smug. "My great-granddaughter told me that she hadn't found any times when this damnable curse swayed me."

Happosai snorted. "And I suppose it was all part of your plan, that time with the Red Thread of Fate? The way I heard it, you stopped Ukyo from going into the church to separate Ranma from Shampoo, but you didn't do a thing about Akane."

The Matriarch's mouth gaped even wider than had Happosai's, and she was silent at least as long. Finally she recovered enough to mutter something under her breath about children being too flattering to their heads of family, grabbed one of the drinks off Happosai's tray, and slugged it down.

"And I heard something about a couple of little Amazon visitors, too," Happosai continued innocently. "What were their names? Ling-Lung or something—"

"You've made your point!" Cologne snapped. "In any case, we ought to get back to the subject of our bargain. I don't have a problem with dropping the contingency plans I'd made, to get Genma an Amazon bride or two a few years down the line."

"Actually I might not care about that at all," Happosai said. "Ask me again when you're ready to do it. What I need from you is a promise not to sink your claws into him now, not to drag him into your idea of training while I'm gone. Anything Goes is all about learning from the situations you find yourself in and the challenges you encounter, but if someone's too much stronger than you are she can make you learn on her terms instead of yours. And that's not what's going to happen here. I want to see how Genma does for himself, to know if I can take him to the next level of Anything Goes. If some other Grandmaster sticks her hand in, throwing her own ingredients into the stew and stirring at her idea of a good pace, that'll ruin everything."

"I'll admit that the idea of training Genma has crossed my mind once or twice in the year I've been here, but it's never gotten farther than just the 'idea' stage." Cologne shrugged. "I certainly don't have a problem with that promise." She was tempted to say, "So, do we have a deal?", but knew that things hadn't quite been threshed out far enough yet. And if the issue she hadn't brought up occurred to Happosai later and was sufficiently troubling, she knew that he wouldn't have any problems breaking his word.

After all, there was more than one reason she'd warned him about the One Oath of the Forsworn. He'd avoided it for three hundred years and more; it would be a shame to see him dragged down to hell someday by good intentions.

Reminding herself that when they finalized this deal, his part needed to be less formal than a true promise, Cologne continued. "But I wonder, Happi. Have you really thought this through?"

The ancient lecher rolled his eyes. "Which one of us was it again, who'd had a week to think about this stuff? Which one was just now hearing it for the first time?"

"Which one of us is talking so blithely about giving up training the best student we've ever seen?" she countered.

"See, that's one of the big differences between you and me," he stated calmly. "You look at Ranma's sheer, raw, shining talent and it makes you drool at the thought of helping him develop it. Me, I barely give a rat's ass."

"You're going to have to do a better job explaining it than that, if you want me to believe you," she pronounced. "No matter how straight a face you said it with. The most talented and dedicated student of the Art that I've ever encountered is a part of your very own school—you can't seriously expect me to believe you don't care."

"That's not what I said. I said I don't care about training him myself," the Anything Goes Grandmaster explained. "Genma already got him as far along as he needs to be; Ranma is growing on his own and contributing stuff to the school already. I don't _need_ to take a direct hand in his development. Any more than I ever did. Feel free to keep feeding him high-level techniques and whatnot." That was the kind of strengthening Anything Goes would receive from Ranma Saotome. As far as the philosophical side of it went, Ranma was all but a lost cause—good at a few points, hopeless at the rest. Genma was far more promising in that arena. Not that he felt like going into that much detail with his explanation.

Cologne started to reply, then checked herself. Happosai had just begun gulping down a white drink that smelled of coconut milk and spiced rum, and she didn't want him spitting any of it onto her when he heard her next comment. She never had cared for coconut.

Once he'd set down the empty tumbler with a satisfied sigh, she said, "I'll be glad to do that, and to leave Genma alone like you wanted. But I'm surprised, Happi. I would have thought you'd be at least a little worried about losing Ranma out of your Anything Goes style."

He just took the statement in stride. "Bah. Ranma will never turn his back on Anything Goes; that's one of the few things Genma really did right. The boy will just take the best of what you've got to offer and work it into the style. And if you can't see that, maybe you're finally getting senile."

The Matriarch whipped out her staff and bonked him on the head. "I was talking about _you_ and what you'd believe, not Ranma. Faith in others is more my sort of thing than yours, you old reprobate."

"Maybe so," he said quietly. "But even someone like me can have a little faith in someone like him." Then, louder, "But if you ever tell anyone I said that, I'll steal your underwear and sell it over the Internet!"

Cologne made a disgusted face. "Are we done here?"

"Heck no!" Happosai shot back. He gestured to the tray before him, still ninety percent full and all the drinks still icy cold. "Maybe you thought I didn't notice, but you've been kind enough to keep everything chilled for me this whole time. That means you have a responsibility to help me finish it off!"

The Matriarch rolled her eyes, but picked up one drink and began to sip it. "All right, but don't expect me to pace you. Some of us have to go to work in the morning."

"Yeah, right," he said, clearly blowing her off.

"Happosai, if you've been watching for a week you must know how many factors I'm juggling right now. Ranma's progressing faster on the relationship front than his ability to admit to progress; Shampoo is smelling the sweet scent of victory and barely restraining herself from charging off in five different directions at once; Mousse is grimly hanging on to pride, dignity, and courage while he does years' worth of overdue growing up; Genma's walking the fine line between 'father' and 'sensei'; Ukyo is forcing herself to consider things in a way she never has before; and Nabiki is clinging ever more desperately to the illusion that she and she alone will decide how it all ends." Cologne heaved an aggrieved, exaggerated sigh. "And that little synopsis is maybe _half_ of everything that's on my mind. If you think that's not work, you've got another think coming."

"All the better then, for you to take a moment to kick back and relax," Happosai countered. "But if you don't mind me saying one last serious thing..."

"Yes?"

"The technique you used to keep all these drinks nice and cold..."

"Yes, yes, the North Wind. What about it?"

Happosai grinned. "Make sure you teach it to Ranma just like that. Show that uptight kid that Mastery is good for more than just the battlefield."

-----------------------

Even with his glasses on and no drinks yet served, the world was a blur. But at least people were recognizable as people, the long bar was easily distinguished from the pool tables off to the side, and Mousse was sure the guy serving the drinks was someone he'd never seen before. In fact, he'd almost expected that last one. It was his first daylight trip to this tavern since his return to Japan, but he'd paid a couple of night-time visits. The guy working that shift had been new too. Mousse suspected that Pyotr Kareshev was the only one strong enough to operate a bar in Nerima over the long term.

This place wasn't as nice as Pyotr's, but it was better than average and the prices were more in line with what he was willing to pay. Granted, he wasn't hard up for yen anymore. He was making his own way now, rather than hanging on like grim death to the pittance of a job Cologne had grudgingly offered him... and that meant that he had significantly more money available. But old habits died hard.

Squinting, Mousse made out a few more details. There was a nice block of open seats over toward the right of the bar, and a straightforward path to them through the smaller tables in the central floor area. He made his way over without mishap, sat down at the bar, and tried to feel hopeful. After all, this was the best place he'd ever found in Japan for receiving sympathy and conversation. As long as he didn't think too hard about that fact, it was at least a little encouraging.

Like any conscientious beer-slinger, the man behind the counter didn't let Mousse sit in silence for long. He strolled over with a courteous, "Good day to you."

The man's voice was low and resonant, reminding Mousse of the one—admittedly memorable—meeting he'd had with Pyotr. He wondered for an instant whether this was a relative of the expatriate Russian's, then discarded the idea. The man facing him appeared large and bulky, to be sure... but his skin was as dark as mahogany and he wore an Afro nearly the size of Mousse's torso. He was clad in black silk robes, which sparked another thought in the Chinese boy's mind: this man was certainly no relation to Pyotr, but he might be some kind of Master in his own right. If so, maybe he'd have the guts to stick with the job for however long Mousse was going to remain in this town.

That could be either a good thing or a bad thing, of course, but so far the guy seemed decent enough. "And to you," Mousse said with a nod. "Are you new here?"

"Just recently started," rumbled the man. "You must be one of the veteran customers."

That wasn't exactly true, Mousse knew. It was true that this was the bar he came to consistently, but although the word 'consistent' could apply to his visits, the same wasn't true of 'frequent'. Nevertheless, he didn't feel like getting into that much of an explanation. "You could say that."

"In that case, your first five rounds are on me," the man said generously.

Mousse blinked. "What? I... thanks, but I don't need that." Not when he was carrying enough yen to pay his way at the number one Nerima watering hole if he'd wanted... or have dinner at the swankiest restaurant in town with Sham—he cut the thought off with grim determination. Not yet. Not while he was still sober.

"I insist," the man said. "It's a gesture I've made to all the regulars so far when I meet them, to ease the pain of losing your previous host."

That was a point, Mousse supposed. He hadn't come here simply to drink himself into momentary forgetfulness; he'd wanted company and even some advice, and the man who'd last held this shift would have been good for both of them. Maybe this guy would prove to be just as good, but maybe he wouldn't; if he did work out, Mousse could always make up the difference on his tab by supersizing the tip. "Well, thanks. Thanks a lot," he said quietly. "I'd like a glass of whatever beer's on tap."

"Unfortunately, we're out of beer," the man said apologetically. "There were a lot of first-time-back regulars earlier today."

Mousse stared blankly into the inky blur that he supposed was the man's face. "It's four thirty in the afternoon, and you mean to tell me your little policy made you _already run out of beer_? And you just work here, right? You don't own the place?"

"That's right."

It actually felt good, to be distracted from his own problems for a bit. Mousse pulled out one of his wallets, emptied it onto the bar, and said, in a tone that brooked no alternative, "Take it. You're gonna need this a lot more than me."

"Well, all right," the man said, reaching out and taking the money. Mousse wasn't sure, but he thought the man stashed it somewhere in the massive frizzball on top of his head. "But I can tell you right now, you're going to get more than the first five rounds free."

"Well, that depends on what I order, doesn't it?" Mousse shot back with a smirk. "Why don't you start me off with some s..." His voice trailed off as he realized he wasn't in the mood for sake, or anything inherently Japanese. "With something exotic," he finished. "But no tequila."

"One creme de minth, coming right up." A minute later, Mousse was sipping the oddly sweet drink, certainly as exotic as he could have wished.

"How is it?" the nameless bartender asked a few moments later, returning from serving other customers.

"Nice and different," he replied. "What country does it come from?"

"Ah, Paraguay I believe," the man said, hesitating so slightly that Mousse missed it.

"Well, that's certainly far enough away." Mousse leaned back and drained the rest of the drink.

"Would you like another? Or maybe something from China this time?"

"No, give me something different. Something else exotic. But no tequila."

"Rum and Coke it is." The bartender turned away, reaching toward a tall bottle of brown glass. He stopped dead when a dagger impacted the wall a few inches away. "What the hel—I mean, what was that for?" the man said over his shoulder, the inquiry starting out as a yell in a higher-pitched voice before sinking back to his controlled basso tone.

"Maybe you're better at this than I thought," Mousse gritted through his teeth. "I've been trying to put on a good face and all, but maybe you're good enough to see I'm hurting here. But that damn well doesn't mean I want you to hook me up with some _cocaine!_"

"How about Coca-Cola?" the man shot back, his voice strained.

Outside, a gust of wind blew papers down the empty street. Crickets chirped. Somewhere, off in the distance, a dog barked.

"Uh... that is... Yes, very well," Mousse said after a few moments, scraping together as much dignity as he could manage. "That would be fine." _' Damn it all, I should have learned Cantonese as my third language, not English. '_

The drink was mixed and delivered. Mousse chose to sip it more slowly than the last; the taste was just as different from anything he was familiar with, but it wasn't as easy to decide whether he liked this one or not. Plus, focusing on that made it easier to push the last little faux pas out of mind.

"So do you want to talk about it?" the bartender said cautiously ten minutes later.

By now Mousse had halfway finished his drink, and had come to the conclusion that he liked it in moderation. It was sort of like his visits to this bar, he thought, the alcohol beginning to have the faintest relaxing effect. It was good to take a swig from the drink every few minutes, just like it was good to come here every so often to have time all his own. Even if he did spend much of it talking about a different Amazon entirely...

"Talk about it?" he echoed. "I... I did come here for that, I guess. But now... I'm not sure." He glanced down into his glass, but didn't lift it to his lips yet.

"I can get you something else to drink, if that one's not what you're looking for."

Mousse shook his head, sighed, and said, "What the hell. It's about a girl. Of course. It's always about a girl, isn't it?" He hadn't deliberately pitched his voice to carry throughout the bar, or in any other way indicated that he was asking the room at large. Nevertheless, everyone who heard him nodded sagely. "And... and what you said... it's like someone said that to her. Because I'm not the one she's looking for, and she got someone else." He hung his head, stared into his drink once more, then leaned back to take a gulp of it. "Chased him for just a year before she caught him," he said bitterly. "And that was in a place she didn't understand at all at first. We grew up together, no culture clash or anything, but for me to her fourteen years wasn't enough."

"If that's how long you've held to this dream..." the bartender said hesitantly, "if it's that important to you... should you be giving up on it now?"

"What else can I do?" Mousse lamented. "I've done everything I can for her. I've fought for her, I've bent over backward for her, I've done everything I've ever been able to think of doing. Except defeat Ranma 'Charmed Life' Saotome." He gave a bitter, hacking laugh. "Even that I almost managed a couple of times. But he always squeaked by, usually because of something he got from Shampoo herself."

"And for something as weak as _that_ she thinks he's a better man than you?" The bartender seemed to have real trouble getting the words out, which Mousse thought was a nice bit of sympathy. "Because, er, because he had more advantages than you did? Doesn't sound too admirable of her to me. Maybe you should tell her that."

"She'd never listen, or at least not care," Mousse said, his voice hollow and his eyes closed. "All she cares about is that he's strong and pretty and wins all his fights, no matter how dirty he has to play to do it."

"Well if it doesn't bother her when he plays dirty, shouldn't that mean you can afford to go farther too? If that's even possible, I mean."

Those last few words were growled so softly that Mousse didn't pay them much attention. "I've gone as far as I can," he said, the words tinged with despair. "It hasn't done any good. It just meant they both push back harder, throwing it more and more in my face that she loves him. Him, and not me. And I... I can't take it any more. Can't take how much it hurts to keep on hoping and telling myself there's a chance, even though she says... Even though she's said she doesn't want me. Over and over again."

"Look, you need to understand. People can change. Sometimes they change right under your nose, when you're too blind to see it happening. And if you want something, you have to fight for it! You can't just sit around, hoping it will fall into your lap!"

"There is something I'd like right now," Mousse said, his voice becoming edged with frost. He slammed down the last of his Rum and Coke, then said, "Another drink. And a little more sympathy, and less advice."

"Coming right up," the bartender said, his voice lower and more growl-like than ever.

Even with his eyesight, Mousse noticed that the bartender was apparently ignoring other customers to serve this drink as quickly as possible. It must be the man's idea of an apology. Accepting the glass with a nod and the barest hint of a bleak smile, he took a sip... and promptly spewed it straight into the man's broad gut.

"What was that for?!" the bartender exclaimed, his voice once more the indignant baritone that had slipped out during the Coca-Cola confusion.

"Damn it, I said _no tequila!_" Mousse choked out.

"Tequila?! Do you see a worm in this bottle?" the man demanded, holding it an inch from Mousse's nose. "Well, do you?!"

At this distance, he was able to focus clearly enough to see that no, there was no worm in the bottle... and yes, the label clearly said 'Tequila' anyway. Mousse pointed this out, his words cold, clipped, and pointed.

"Ah... heh heh... I would say drinks are on the house, but you already knew that," the man said, righteous indignation fully subsumed now by nervous apology. "Sorry about that. I'm impressed you can pick out the drink so easily by its taste."

" It only takes one time swallowing the worm to scar you for life, " Mousse muttered in his own tongue. Returning to Japanese, he said, "Well, when one sense isn't so great," he tapped his glasses meaningfully, "the rest get stronger to make up for it."

"You ought to tell yours to kick into higher gear, then," grumbled a man several seats farther down the bar. He was one of those who'd been waiting on a refill while the bartender focused so much attention on this one customer, and had frankly reached his limit. "You haven't realized yet that that's Genma Saotome in black shoe-polish and a wig."

With a cry of "Urk!" the man across from him stiffened like a stone, which gave Mousse all the opportunity he needed. After recovering from his own moment of shocked stillness, the half-blind boy grabbed the glass of tequila and threw it into his genial host's face. Sure enough, the liquid carried away the dark hues that had stained the man's skin, except for the area around his eyes which had been shielded by his glasses. One corner of Mousse's mind noted the amusing similarity to a panda's mask, and had a brief chuckle. Another realized that whatever Genma had actually used, it had come off too easily to be simple shoe polish.

The remaining 99.8 percent of his psyche found a rather different focus. "H- how dare you!" Mousse spat. "I expect this kind of stuff from your son, Saotome. Couldn't you just leave tormenting me to him?!"

"Tormenting you?" Genma growled. There was a note in his voice that Mousse had never heard from the older man before... but as the Chinese boy didn't pay enough attention to voices, he didn't notice. "By giving you free drinks? By telling you not to give up on your dreams? By defeating the martial artist who just bought this place, so that he'd let me play this little charade? You ought to be grateful!"

"G-grateful?! For the _tequila?!_" Mousse shot back.

"That wasn't my fault," Genma blustered. "There was no worm in that bottle. That's like the gold standard trademark of tequila. They shouldn't make it without that."

"I beg to differ," Mousse spat, his fingers twitching to launch an attack at the fat fool. "And my dreams... telling me to keep on dreaming them... I didn't come here to have some scumbag manipulate me into hurting myself even more! I wanted to talk about my problems, not have them get even worse!"

"How is it a problem, if you say losing Shampoo is killing you inside, and I tell you you shouldn't give up on her yet?"

"She's already gone!" Mousse yelled back at him. "I'm not losing her, I'm just trying... _trying_ to swallow the truth that I never had her in the first place! And I damn well don't need some honorless bastard pretending to listen and give good advice, when he's just trying to get something for himself!"

"I'm making allowances for you, boy, but I advise you not to push it." The note from before was back in Genma's voice, stronger than ever. "I was listening to you, and I think it was great advice. I _want_ to see you pull off an upset win and ride off into the sunset with Shampoo. What the hell difference does it make in that picture, if I'm more worried about my son than you?"

"You're right, I'm sorry, I should have realized that this time it was the stupidity talking, not the honorlessness."

A dim battle aura flickered to life around Genma. He choked it back with difficulty. "If you don't think there's any hope, then why are you still here?" he grated out. "Shouldn't you have taken yourself," _'and your own damn stupidity and honorlessness,'_ "back to China for good already?"

"Probably," Mousse said bitterly. "But I'm not going yet. Shampoo may not want me, but that doesn't mean she doesn't need me. If I can watch out for her, protect her, give her what help I can... that makes it worth it, how much it hurts to stay here so I can keep an eye on her and your damnable son."

"If you insult my boy one more time, you're not walking out of here under your own power," Genma said, his voice as ominous as the quiet before a storm. "I stood there and swallowed all that garbage you spewed earlier, and I'm beginning to think that was a mistake. I knew you were blind in more ways than one, but I never quite realized how far it went."

"Pfaugh!" Mousse spat. The insult against his vision almost didn't sting at all, compared to all the other hurts he'd endured. "For your information, when I use an Instant Falcon powder I can see _perfectly._ It's just the story of my life, I guess, that the only way to do that is with a Jusenkyo curse... the same curse that my beloved Shampoo bears... and that she gave that scumsucking Ranma... and that her ghoul of a grandmother said I can't have for real unless I go somewhere else and abandon Shampoo... and... and..." So much for thoughts of his visual impairment not hurting, Mousse thought bitterly.

"It's not an insult if it's the truth, Mr. Panda," he said, pushing that particular turmoil aside. This wasn't about him; it was about Shampoo and Ranma. "If this had all happened six months ago, there's no way in hell your precious son wouldn't have broken Shampoo's heart. The one and only hope I've got that he won't do that now, is that the old mummy has had enough time to beat him into submission. Without something like that, he'd just use her to get what he wanted, and throw her away when he was done."

Genma's fists clenched. His pulse raced. The blood thundered in his ears, seeming to carry with it whispers of past encounters with his son—times when he'd pushed matters of honor onto Ranma, knowing that his son would deal with them... times when the boy had fought with all he had, not just for Akane but for whatever girl needed rescuing or protecting... a time not long ago at all, when he and his son had sat down in a different bar and Ranma had told him that he wouldn't marry any girl until he knew he was ready for it, knew he wouldn't end up hurting her by his decision...

It took several seconds for him to find his voice, and when he did it was nearly choked with fury. "Part of the plan to work with you was to keep you from trying any more of your damned backstabbing against my boy," he ground out. "But I think maybe there's a better way to achieve that."

And then he moved. His hands were merely a blur as he grabbed up the abandoned tequila bottle, smashed away the bottle's neck with a knife-edge strike, and threw the remaining drink into Mousse's face.

Most of the patrons made a quick and speedy exit. The few hardy souls that remained were very surprised; Mousse didn't move at all for several moments. When he did, it was just to pull a succession of handkerchiefs from his sleeve and use them to wipe his face and glasses. "You know, Mr. Saotome, I probably should thank you," he said conversationally.

Genma blinked, anger and battle-readiness ebbing, replaced by a flood tide of puzzlement. "Eh? Thank me?"

"Of course." Mousse nodded earnestly. "Your advice sucked and so did your service, but you're at least going to help me burn off some stress." Only then did he launch his first attack, a padded weight on the end of a chain smacking directly into Genma's chest and sending him skidding backward.

With superhuman effort the elder Saotome recovered nearly instantly, stopping himself before he could impact with the wall that held the liquor bottles. _'Never thought I'd be grateful for that part of the Master's training,' _he thought grimly. Happosai had made his disciples steal food and drink for him more times than either Soun or Genma could count, but they _could_ count the number of times those thefts hadn't involved running from an angry mob. In fact, they could count those times on the fingers of one foot. Those chase scenes had always been made worse by knowing just how painfully Happosai would express his displeasure if either of them broke a single bottle of sake.

Well, the Master wasn't around to carp about wasted booze now, and his agreement with the guy who owned this place was slanted far into Genma's favor. "Take this! Bar Battle Bottle Barrage!" Genma shouted, grabbing and flinging a dozen varieties of alcohol at Mousse.

The Chinese boy was darting backwards even as Genma reached for the ammunition. He winced at the elder Saotome's improvised attack name, but that wasn't enough to distract him from his defense. He'd already dropped the chain that had launched his first attack, and now he pulled out another, one with a medium steel weight at the end rather than the bulky padded affair that had struck Genma. Mousse produced just enough of the chain that he could spin it in a wide circle in front of him, shielding himself from the incoming rain of missiles.

The tactic kept any of the glass from hitting him, even after the bottles shattered against his shield. Unfortunately, Mousse hadn't quite thought the matter all the way through, and ended up soaked in fifty thousand yen's worth of alcohol. "D- dammit," he sputtered. "The tequila was bad enough! I don't need someone as incompetent as you trying to teach me the sake-ken!"

Genma's face twisted. "Saotome clan special attack! GREAT FIREBALL!"

"NOOOO!!" Mousse screamed, sarcasm and composure gone in an instant... which was about how long he'd last in his current state, if so much as a spark landed on him. The door was too far off and there were too many tables in the way. Instead, Mousse spun and charged for the window. No time even to launch a spread of chains in front of him to break the glass ahead of time; he'd have to do a midair somersaulting twist while shielding his face with his sleeves, to keep the shattering glass from cutting him!

WHUMP

Or the glass could turn out to be shatterproof. That would work too, Mousse thought woozily.

The sound of Genma's incredibly obnoxious laughter shoved him back toward clear-headedness. "Now who's incompetent, boy?" the Saotome Master taunted. "Although I admit I made a mistake of my own just now, miscalling my attack like that." Genma waited just that extra second that made the follow-up even more annoying, then said, "It should have been, Saotome clan special attack: Fake Out!"

"Die!" Mouse yelled, eschewing witty banter. Thirty-odd chains shot toward Genma, carrying a variety of piercing, bludgeoning, and slashing implements.

The elder Saotome merely dropped behind the long bar, allowing it to shield him. This was perhaps the second highest quality bar in Nerima (hence the shatterproof window), and the wood of the fixture shrugged off Mousse's offensive with little more than knicks, dents, and scratches.

Of course, there were chains that had been aimed too high to be stopped by the bar; if that weren't true, Genma wouldn't even have needed to duck. Those chains and their implements of pain continued unimpeded to strike the back wall, shattering numerous bottles in the process. An instant later Mousse pulled back on the chains, jerking just hard enough to free the ones stuck in the wall. The move sent them dropping to tangle around the bulky shape of Genma Saotome, which he could still sense cowering there.

He sensed it, too, an instant later, when the chain-tangled bulky shape melted away like a sandcastle under a storm.

"Saotome special attack: Cheap Shot!" The words and the blow came out of nowhere, a fist in his back sending Mousse rocketing away to smash into a table. Genma winced. _'I have got to come up with a better name for it than that. Maybe White Snake Reliable Fist or something.'_

"W- what the hell?!" Mousse exclaimed, picking himself up and turning to face his adversary.

"You may call yourself the Master of Hidden Weapons, boy, but that doesn't mean you can stand up to a _real_ Master," Genma proclaimed grandiosely.

"Just try that again!" Mousse yelled, focusing as carefully on the slippery Saotome as he could. _' Wait a minute... his hands are still black, his robes are still black, and he's still got that ridiculous wig... but his whole face is clean. When did he wipe off the black circles that were left under his glasses? '_

Instinct saved him, instinct and years of experience with not trusting his eyes. Mousse dived to one side, launching a single thrown dagger at the form of Genma Saotome. It shimmered and dispersed even as another Genma, this one still wearing the mark of the panda, slammed through the empty air Mousse had so recently vacated. Genma growled, and darted to the side as fast as he could, getting out of Mousse's field of vision while the Chinese boy was still off-balance. There was only a second while Genma was completely out of view... but by the time Mousse located him again, the only Genma Saotome to be seen was the one with the wholly-clean face.

"Nice try, but I know it's not you," Mousse seethed, keeping one eye on the image anyway while trying to locate the real Genma. At the same time, he was attempting to run down a nagging feeling of familiarity. Something about the elder Saotome's trick was tickling the back of his mind, but this was no time to devote too much attention to the problem.

"And what makes you say that?"

The words were clear enough, and the figure's lips had moved during the speech, but it felt to Mousse as if the sounds had originated from some point further away. "Ha. As if I'd tell you!" he shot back, trying to make it look like he was completely focused on the visible Genma.

"It's the face, Saotome," called one of the four remaining bystanders. "Yeah, that drink washed off the black stuff, but it didn't get the part that was under your glasses."

"Shut up!" Mousse yelled, forgetting Genma entirely as he whirled to face the speaker. "Stay out of this!"

"Hey, I helped you earlier by pointing out that it was Genma in the first place. I'm just evening the score." Plus, with Genma having abandoned his pose as bartender, the man had been able to snag five bottles of high-quality liquor for himself at no charge.

"An opening!" Mousse spun frantically back around to see Genma running toward him, still clean-faced. Another thrown knife made this image, too, vanish as if it had never been. Almost as quickly another Genma appeared a little to one side, closer to him and charging forward—and this one's face was still black as soot under his glasses.

Mousse was still scrambling to recover from his last attack. He found himself wishing he'd thrown the knife blind, rather than (just in case) taking the time to aim the strike at a nonvital area. There was no time at all for such niceties of targetting now. It was all he could do to pull off a Fist of the White Swan at the very last second.

He'd been ready for the elder Saotome to block the move. He'd been ready, willing, and eager for it to catch Genma off guard and knock the stuffing out of him. He certainly had _not_ been ready for the strike to once again cause the image of Genma to vanish after the briefest instant of resistance.

The pool cue smashing into him from behind sent Mousse staggering forward once more. However, the blow had fallen in the middle of his back, the very place where Genma had landed his earlier cheap shot... and after the second, failed attack Mousse had used one of his own new tricks, materializing a wide patch of interlocked chains there under his robes. Because of this, he took much less damage from the blow than Genma had intended.

_'Knew I should have gone for a head shot. I'm too soft-hearted for my own good,'_ Genma thought, cloaking himself once more in his Now You See Me, Now You Don't—Saotome Style technique.

"Stop it with the cheap tricks already!" Mousse demanded. "Face me like a man!!"

Whereas his son might have been at least a little sore at the insult, Genma just gaped for a moment. He wasn't stunned enough to loosen his hold on the technique, though. "_You're_ complaining to _me_ about fighting with _tricks_?"

"Shut up and die!" Mousse began flinging projectiles with wild abandon, spraying the entire bar with them. In deference to three out of the four remaining spectators, he limited his assault to harmless bean-bags. As soon as one of those bounced off apparently empty air, he'd follow up with something a bit more pointed...

Unfortunately for the Chinese boy, Genma managed to take cover behind a pool table before the trick could reveal him.

Unfortunately for Genma, Mousse concluded that his foe must have done something like that. He lobbed a few extra missiles into the mix and screwed his eyes shut.

The flash bombs went off all at once. The ones Mousse had dropped behind the bar accomplished nothing, as did most of the ones behind the pool tables. But the one three inches from Genma blinded him as nicely as Mousse could have hoped.

The yelp from behind the table drew his attention. With that as his cue and his eyes open once more, Mousse was able to make out the black-clad shape that was Genma's crouching form, just visible through the gap underneath the table. With a yell of his own, Mousse darted forward and upward, landing on the table and throwing down a spray of thinly-padded chained weights.

However, his approach proved to be a tactical error. Had he just run around the table to launch his attack, the fight might have ended then and there. As it was, Genma took the hits, but Mousse wasn't able to tangle him in the chains as he'd intended. The still-blinded Saotome had shifted his pose in the instant he felt Mousse land on the table, bracing himself as he straightened up from the ninety-degree angle bend that had kept his Afro below table level. In the next instant Genma surged to his feet, toppling the table and sending Mousse flying even as the chains pounded into him. Both fighters came out of the exchange with a few painful bruises, but nothing worse.

"Not bad, Mousse," Genma rumbled, his vision clearing. "If you always fought like that, I wouldn't have a problem with you challenging my boy." He gave a theatrical sigh. "But since I can't trust you not to go for his throat, I'm still going to have to crush you. Just like a good father should."

"I wouldn't push it if I were you, Saotome," Mousse warned. Despite the tone of his words he was moving away from the Anything Goes fighter, rather than toward him. "I'm _trying_ not to blame you for everything Ranma's done, because if anyone tried to pin the mistakes I've made on my mother I'd bury them. But there's a big difference between Ranma and me, so you need to back off... or just shut up entirely! HYYAAAH!" And with that, he launched another volley of missiles, to the naked eye identical to the bean bags from before.

Genma learned the difference the hard way. As the first bag left Mousse's grasp each of his hands was fastening around a pool cue. By the time the missiles drew near, Genma's defense was ready. Swinging the cues like oversized jo sticks, he smashed each and every bag out of the air, trying to angle them back toward Mousse. Not until he'd dealt with the last bag did his focus clear enough to realize something important: each one he'd hit had ripped wide open and dropped a payload of ball bearings onto the ground. The space between himself and his opponent was now as treacherous as oil over ice.

"What's the matter, Saotome? Aren't you going to charge in for another sneak attack?" Mousse gloated.

For a moment Genma tensed, preparing for a floor-to-wall-to-ceiling-to-target triangle jump. Then, with difficulty, he pushed the temptation aside. It would be much more satisfying to beat this upstart at his own game... and the fights he'd witnessed between Akane and the heir of Good Old Days Martial Arts should give him just the trick he needed. Instead, he moved over to the nearest upright pool table, being careful to slide his feet along the floor in case of errant bb's. "I don't think so," he answered, reaching out and taking hold of the eight ball, then tossing it into the air. "The action's been fast and furious so far." The cue ball joined its black brother, the two orbs spinning in a circle maintained by Genma's free hand. "I could use a few minutes' break from the action. Maybe a little juggling to lighten the mood." Another ball joined the action, and then another, and now Genma needed both hands to support the four spinning, flashing spheres.

He noted Mousse's silence with grim satisfaction. The Chinese boy was staring at the whirl of the balls, his attention fully focused. The same thing was true of every spectator, although Genma didn't spare more than a glimpse to confirm this. Most of his attention was fixated on the pattern of the balls as he shifted them from air to hand to hand to air. Do it right, and when he finally launched them...

"Saotome Anything Goes Special Attack! Billiard Ball Blitzkrieg!"

The spectators gasped in disbelief, as the four balls that Genma had thrown seemingly transformed into an endless stream of flying faux-ivory. The swarm of balls shot across the space between the two combatants, to all appearances enough to bury Mousse alive, let alone defeat him.

And then they gaped all the wider. Mousse sprouted long metal talons from each hand, swung each weapon once, twice—and just that easily, the illusion was shattered. The image of a thousand flying spheres vanished, replaced by three balls deflected onto the floor, and a fourth flying back to nearly smack Genma in the forehead. Only a last-second duck saved him, the ball vanishing into the depths of his Afro.

Mousse ignored the impression that the ball hadn't exited out the other side. "What was that supposed to be? Did you seriously think I couldn't deal with four measly balls thrown at me?"

Genma groaned, then smacked himself upside the head. "Right," he muttered. "Poor vision would screw that up, wouldn't it?" Akane had realized the trick almost too late in her second fight with the Good Old Days heir, had nearly been caught by the technique a second time because she stood there and watched enough of the setup to be partially affected by the illusion. Still, that was a less embarrassing blunder than he'd just made.

"Tell you what," Mousse seethed. "You stop making fun of my damn glasses, and I won't mention your hair, or your belly, or your freeloading, or your excuse for a son, or the fact that you've never... accomplished... anything..." His voice trailed off as he caught sight of the battle aura burning around Genma. Even without his glasses, this one would have been visible. Not a good sign, Mousse recognized.

"You want serious, you little brat?" Genma said quietly. "You want real? You want me to think back to what it felt like, watching that last fight between you and my boy, watching him try to talk to you while you did your damned best to kill him?" His voice had steadily mounted in power and anger over the last sentence, and it was with a shout that he continued, "Fine! This time, for real!"

In the blink of an eye, two massive pandas peeled themselves off Genma, one to the right and one to the left, and charged toward Mousse in a pincer attack. Two more duplicates, these of his human form, vaulted backward behind other pool tables and began grabbing and throwing balls, half of them flung straight at Mousse, the rest tossed lightly onto the table sheltering Genma. The Saotome Master grabbed those as quickly as they came, firing them toward the Hidden Weapons fighter with all the speed, force, and precision he could manage—which was significantly greater than the throws of the aura-Genmas.

Undoubtedly there was something in Mousse's bag of tricks that could have handled an assault like this. But he would have needed a lot more time, warning, and cool-headedness to find it.

He deflected the true Genma's first five missiles. Then the clones' attacks were raining in as well, and he couldn't stop everything; in trying, he left himself open for several full-power shots to land. Realizing through the haze of pain that pure defense wasn't feasible, he dropped what was left of his guard, his arms coming up and forward to launch every last chain he could manage.

As the pandas reached him just then, that turned out to be zero.

The chi-pandas were only semisolid—hence their lack of difficulty with the ball bearings—but in a way that was even worse. They still hit with devastating force, and then they shattered and washed over him, knocking him flat. Genma had fueled this attack with every negative emotion the last three months had ever provoked in him, and in a spiritual sense, it was like Mousse was buried under a flood of burning bile. He very nearly lost control of the chi warp that hid his massive stores of weapons and equipment and whatnot, and burned a terrible portion of his remaining strength reestablishing his hold over it before it could destabilize all at once. It was damned impressive, Mousse thought bitterly, since under normal circumstances he could be knocked unconscious without so much as a twinge in the stability of the warp.

The Chinese boy could hear Genma's harsh panting from the other side of the room. _' At least it took a lot out of him, to pull off something like that. '_ Not much consolation, since the attack had most definitely ended the fight, but it was all Mousse could find.

"Go home, boy," Genma said, his breathing now under control. His tone was quiet, even sad, but at the same time as firm as steel. "You've outstayed your welcome in this town. It was a mistake to try and work with you, even if I was mainly trying to look out for my son and figure out how deep his feelings for Shampoo really are. It was a mistake, and I'm fixing it now."

"Splitting Cat Hairs."

Genma blinked. "What?"

"That's what I was trying to think of. What your attack reminded me of. What it basically was, at least at the end. The Splitting Cat Hairs technique."

The Saotome Master scratched at his head, willing for the moment to swallow the diversion. From the difficulty with which Mousse was pulling himself to his feet, the teen wasn't trying to buy time to recover for one last attack. Even if he was, Mousse certainly didn't have enough left for an attack that would threaten Genma. He'd burned a lot of his own strength just then, but he still had enough left to finish this if it needed to be finished. "Why does that matter?" he asked.

"What did I say, earlier? About what my only hope was that... that Ranma wouldn't end up breaking Shampoo's heart?"

Genma frowned. "I don't remember exactly, just that it was stupid and pointless, an insult to a better man than y—" He paused, sighed, and said, "Than either of us."

Mousse knew just as well as Genma that the older man had enough fight left to take him the rest of the way down. Consequently, he swallowed the retort that came to mind. It didn't matter anyway, he reminded himself. "I said that the only chance was if Cologne's had enough time to work on him, to get him around to her way of thinking."

"Actually you said 'beat him into submission'," Genma remembered.

"That was just wishful thinking. She doesn't need to use such crude methods as that, to get people moving the way she wants." Squinting, Mousse did his best to read Genma's expression and body language. As he'd expected, the man showed little confidence in what he was hearing. "Just look at you, Mr. Saotome! Look at how you won our fight just now! You showed me better than I could possibly have expected. It's not just Ranma, it's his whole family! The old mummy's got _all_ of you right where she wants you!"

"Let me see if I've got this straight," Genma said after a long, long pause. "Because I beat you with a variation of the Splitting Cat Hairs, which is an Amazon technique, you're confident that everything is going just exactly the way Cologne wants. That she's moved us around to where she wants us, like pieces on a shogi board. You think that's proof enough that Ranma won't be _allowed_ to mistreat Shampoo."

"No," Mousse said. "I _know_ it's enough."

Genma's pause was even longer this time, long enough for Mousse to give him a long, studying look, open his mouth as if to say something else, decide he didn't want to carry the conversation any further, turn, and head for the door. _' There's no need to drag this out any more, _' he thought. _'I've said my piece, not to mention lost another damn fight to a Saotome. I just want out of here. '_

For his part, Genma was pondering what Mousse had said, plus other thoughts that had been sparked by it. He hadn't taken long to consider and dismiss the idea Mousse had been so certain of. _'It probably makes the boy feel better, if he can say losing Shampoo was inevitable because Cologne can't be beaten,' _he thought, wincing as he substituted Happosai for the Matriarch and recalled various parallels from his own life. _'And I suppose it's a short trip from seeing her awesome combat skills to thinking she's unstoppable at every turn.'_ That, at least, was one place where Genma hadn't preceded in Mousse's footsteps; Cologne was respectable in more than just the battlefield, but Happosai was a far cry from it. No, the old woman might have a plan, and it might be a damn good one... but they weren't all just puppets dancing to her tune.

_'I know the boy has trouble seeing things clearly, jumps to wrong conclusions and holds tightly to them, but even with his track record...' _Genma sighed. _'It's sad. Splitting Cat Hairs is a legendary technique, known about in at least one place that had never heard of the Amazons. I worked my butt off to be able to do what I can now, and it certainly wasn't because Cologne goaded me into it or helped me. It was just Anything Goes at its finest, taking the best of what you find and making it your own...'_

Something about that thought seemed to spark a deeper, more important idea. Genma reached out for it, grasping at the fluidly elusive thought, losing it to distraction as he noticed Mousse trudging out of the bar. He did nothing to stop him. Anything Goes was also about not revealing stuff you didn't need to reveal, and he couldn't see one good reason to shake the boy out of his illusions. After all, they were enough to convince Mousse that he didn't need to fight Ranma anymore, and after today Genma was convinced that was a good thing. Whatever happened from here on, however things went between his son and the boy's Amazon fiancée, better if Mousse just stayed out of it entirely.

The thought of Ranma and Shampoo triggered the emergence of the idea he'd earlier grasped at in vain. Genma sucked in a breath as it hit him all at once. "Anything Goes," he muttered, too stirred to limit himself to silent thought. "It _is_ all about taking the best things for yourself, out of whatever comes your way. And... and even if it doesn't seem to me like Shampoo herself qualifies... doesn't that have to be Ranma's choice in the end? Don't I have to trust him for that?"

He stood there for a few moments more, swiftly recognizing that this wasn't something to be decided quickly or easily. A jump put him back behind the bar, several careful grabs stored as many bottles of high-quality booze in his Afro as he could manage, and then Genma headed out the door to find a quiet spot, finally take off the ridiculous-but-useful wig, and do some serious thinking.

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Author's notes

I'm sorry for how long this took. You've all heard the 'real life got in the way' song and dance before, so I won't repeat that age-old chorus. Additionally, I've been writing this story for years now, with only the slightest of breaks to pump out a couple of quick one-shots while I basically just let all my other ideas slide. That's beginning to wear me down, I think. I'm not abandoning this story or even putting it on hiatus, but from now on I'm not devoting one hundred percent of my creative energy to it. If any of you are familiar with the anime _Rozen Maiden_, you might be interested to know that a continuation fic for that series will shortly be making its appearance here.

For those of you who missed his episode, Chingensai was a tiny old Ninja Grandmaster encountered by Genma and Soun during the original series. They were impressed by his Now You See Me, Now You Don't 'invisibility' technique and slaved away in training under him to learn it. What they were eventually taught was tricks to use the environment to hide yourself, which they attempted to use against Happosai (Genma hiding behind a canvas backdrop painted to look just like the surrounding area, Soun tunneling through the ground with a hand trowel). Neither of these attempts impressed the Demon Master at all, who whipped out his own invisibility technique—the Happo Dimensional Warp. As he explains it, the move functions by synchronizing your aura to the environment around you in such a way as to become indistinguishable from said environment.

It's also revealed that Happosai and Chingensai are old training buddies. As you can see, in this story I took the liberty of saying that Happosai developed his Dimensional Warp from Chingensai's original technique—though since one manipulates the environment to hide you whereas the other manipulates yourself to fit the environment, I think the name change was certainly justified. I also think it's safe to assume that Chingensai's ability to hide by manipulating the environment might be just a _little_ more impressive than what was demonstrated by Soun and Genma... Regardless, though, Genma really shouldn't be using 'Now You See Me, Now You Don't' to refer to his revision, as it is ultimately a modification of Happosai's method of concealment.

Speaking of Genma and his techniques, readers familiar with the manga might have noticed a reference to Genma 'developing' a technique that he already does have in that source material. The White Snake Reliable Fist is one of the Umisenken techniques, from what I understand. But in the anime the Umisenken and Yamasenken don't exist, so it's fair game (and funny too, at least to me) to show Genma actually sort of in the process of developing the Umisenken. Don't expect too much more on that front, though... this piece focused so heavily on Genma in part because he isn't scheduled to get much screen time in the remaining pieces of the story.

It should be reasonably clear to the readers whether Mousse is right or wrong, in the assumption he makes at the end of the last scene. If not, it will definitely be obvious after chapter 10. The real issue that the readers should ponder is not whether he was right, but what it says about him that on at least some level he now _wants_ to believe Ranma won't end up hurting Shampoo. I would have liked to raise that question within the context of the story rather than spelling it out here, but it felt a little too insightful for Genma Saotome (even this 'new and improved' Genma).

Thanks to NemesisZero and Ed Simons for prereading. Thanks also to Ed for permission to refer to his character Keiki Oishii, the heir to the school of Martial Arts Baking. A couple of ideas for the 'Ranma and Genma in the bar' scene were inspired by NemoBlank's story Lord of Chaos. To anyone who was disappointed that this piece of the story had only one scene involving Ranma, and that one with him only interacting with his father rather than certain other cast members—that's why it was a side story, not chapter 10.


End file.
